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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22779754">Sonic 2020: The Lunch Lady</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queenfighterfly/pseuds/Queenfighterfly'>Queenfighterfly</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sonic 2020: Lunch Lady [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adopted Children, Anxiety Attacks, Autism Spectrum, Bisexual Female Character, Explicit Language, F/F, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mentally Ill Farmer Adopts a Feral Space Gremlin that Lives in the Woods, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Social Anxiety, Useless Lesbians, single mom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:46:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>42,135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22779754</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queenfighterfly/pseuds/Queenfighterfly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>All she really knew about the little guy for five long years was that he lived in the woods, only communicated through the occasional drawn picture or torn magazine page, and loved her cooking. But that was fine. She'd walk through the woods, talking or singing into the wind, bringing him snacks and making him food, and he'd leave presents, drawings and letters on her back porch. Never a spoken word exchanged between either of them.</p><p>And she was perfectly content with that arrangement. </p><p>Then the power went out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original female character / Original female character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sonic 2020: Lunch Lady [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637692</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>204</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. When the Lunch Lady Came to Green Hills</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So after watching the Sonic 2020 movie and loving it, I decided to fill the time waiting for the sequels to come out with something a little more personal. I love Tom and Maddie, but Sonic is something very close to my heart, and this is something of a love letter of sorts, considering Sonic has gotten me through a lot of tough times in my life.</p><p>So yes, Kit - the main human protagonist this story introduces - is a self-insert, and while some parts of her backstory are adjusted or changed for the sake of the story, much of it based on my real past, with the main deviation being from a "What if I'd made a different choice?" perspective when I'd come to a crossroads in the past. A lot of this is reflective of various points in my life.</p><p>Some characters may be fabricated - like the best friend/love interest Aubrey - while some characters, like Kit's family or other friends of hers, are loosely based on real family members or real people I've known or dealt with. How close it is to reality is my business, but much of what Kit has gone through is very accurate to what I went through. This is a warning that Kit may end up talking about subjects pertaining to emotional and mental abuse in future chapters, and there will be portrayals of panic attacks and PTSD in future chapters. (Both from her and Sonic, though they both have their own different issues.)</p><p>This project is somewhat personal to me, mostly as a love letter for Sonic after he got me through a lot of dark times during my childhood. But the story won't all be dark and gloomy, there'll be room for wholesome and fun times as well!</p><p>This is all just something that's pretty personal, is all I'm trying to say. If we're all still down with that, feel free to read on!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>June 5th, 2015</strong>
</p><p>Green Hills, Montana. The best place on Earth.</p><p>Probably because it was the only place on Earth he'd ever been. Not that he had a bias or anything.</p><p>The little blue hedgehog had been there for five long, quiet years at that point in his life. It was hard to keep track of how old he was, but he was sure he was just about to turn eight years old in a few weeks. </p><p>It took him a while, but he figured out that the people here called this time of the year 'June'. And boy, did Sonic the Hedgehog love June! June was the best time of the year! The weather was at its best; not too hot, not too cold. All the kids were out of school for summer vacation, hanging out with their friends at the park or the movie theater or the swimming pool, all the best flowers in the woods were at their best, and everyone started busting out ice cream.</p><p>Plus, his birthday was in it! Even if he didn't... have anyone to spend it with, it was still the best day of the year! He had his cave, the food, the woods, the people, the lake; everything was still great. He was okay. As long as he kept his distance, he'd still be okay.</p><p>By now, he'd gotten used to how everything seemed to work here. Everyone was familiar. Everyone knew everyone, and no one ever really seemed to come or go in Green Hills. You were born there, raised there, and probably died there, eventually. At least that was how the ever awesome Donut Lord described him.</p><p>The Donut Lord. At least that was what Sonic called him. Much like today, the little blue ball of energy loved to watch him from underneath the cafe's small trash bin at the corner as the tall Sheriff of Green Hills went about his day, doing his duty in service to the people of the town, no matter how big or small. He was one of his favorites, always showing those bad donuts who was in charge of the small country town. Every now and then, he would hold up his hand to stop the trail of cars and let the family of ducks cross the street.</p><p>He was so cool. </p><p>"You hear Dugger's house finally got sold?"</p><p>Sonic's tiny ears twitched at the sound of casual conversation at the diners' table outside. He scooted further back around the corner to make sure he wouldn't be seen, and keened a ear to focus his hearing on their chatter. He was sure he recognized the two older gentlemen talking amongst themselves. The Tree Killer and the Car Fixer. He called the older guy the Tree Killer, but he actually didn't mind the guy. He just didn't know what else to call him cause he cut down trees sometimes, sometimes to just put in people's houses during winter, or to make into things, or to build other things. He wasn't a bad guy, he just cut down trees. And the other guy fixed people's cars when they stopped working, which was kind of a no brainer.</p><p>'Dugger' was the guy they all called The Cranky Shovel. He lived all by himself in that big house of his closer to the woods, and yelled at anyone who came too close. No one was safe from his shovel; the mail man, Crazy Carl, not even the sweet Girl Scouts just trying to sell some cookies.</p><p>But one day, he stopped coming out of his house whenever people came by. A bunch of people came and started pulling all his stuff out of his house, and it'd been empty ever since. </p><p>"Yeah, almost a shame to see," Tree Killer sighed with a small, sad shake of his head."He's been here almost eighty-nine years."</p><p>"Mm. It was his time though," Car Fixer consoled him.</p><p>"I know. Did you hear who bought it?" Tree Killer asked, picking up his tiny mug of that nasty bitter brown stuff Sonic tried once and swore off of forever.</p><p>"Not sure. Mary might. She's the one who sold it," Car Fixer hummed, poking at his eggs.</p><p>Oh, yeah, Paint Lady. She was the one always painting the kids' faces at fairs that the town had during holidays. Sonic liked her. He liked to think she'd probably like him too. </p><p>"You know she's not gonna tell. She can't, legally speakin'."</p><p>"I know she can't give away anything sensitive, but she can at least give us a body count or something."</p><p>"Nope, airtight," Tree Killer insisted with another headshake, smiling finally. "But hey, I'm sure Tom and Maddie'll throw one of their usual 'Welcome to Green Hills' cookouts. We'll probably get to see 'em then."</p><p>Sonic perked up. Oh, right, the cookout! It didn't happen very often, it had probably only happened once or twice before, but when someone new did finally show up in Green Hills, Donut Lord and Pretzel Lady always threw a big party in their backyard! There was always all kinds of yummy food there. Now he was excited!</p><p>His quills furling with newfound energy, he scooted backwards, pulled himself out from under the bin, pushed himself onto his feet, and immediately knew where he had to go.</p><hr/><p>Cranky Shovel's house was further away from most of the other people's houses, closer to the woods. It was on some old farmland, as far as Sonic assumed. Most of it was unused and old, but there was an old barn, some stables, a lot of grass and fields where he spent a lot of his time, an old tool shed... and there were still some chickens left in the coop. He did like those old chickens. They were fun to play with and talk to sometimes, even if they didn't talk back. They just clucked and pooped.</p><p>But it was nice. The house was really old, but when the people came around to pull all the furniture out, they made it all pretty; fixed the roof and the broken windows, painted the outside, finally mowed the overgrown lawn out front, but thankfully didn't dig up his hidden stash of thrown out baseball cards he kept buried under the forgotten old stone. The house used to be really dusty and grey, but now it was bright white and green.</p><p>For the last couple months, there weren't any cars around. Everyone was leaving everything alone. But now, as he sped up to his usual hiding bush just beside the mailbox, he suddenly found a lot more activity than usual. There was a big white van and a black car outside, and some guys bringing stuff from inside the van and into the house. A couch, a bed frame, a shelf...</p><p>He zipped closer to the van to try to see if anyone was inside. While the two men had gone inside, he peered into the large interior of the van. Nope, nobody. Just some furniture. Not a lot, though. Slumping in disappointment, Sonic dashed around the front porch and around the corner of the house.</p><p>In the blink of an eye, he dashed around where the dead tulips used to be; someone dug them up, apparently. He peered around into the back porch and found the door open. Soft country music chimed from within, a woman's gentle voice humming along, and a pleasant, warm smell poured out of the back door, practically inviting him to come in. </p><p>Did he dare...</p><p>No. He shook his head and pulled himself away. No, no, no, he couldn't go in. He knew better. As much as he wanted to know who it was, he knew better. He remembered what Longclaw told him. It was too dangerous, both for himself and other people... Well, she hadn't said that much, but it wasn't hard to infer.</p><p>He had to get a better look some other way. Maybe through a window... Or through the sliding glass door. Right. As long as he just looked in and didn't go in, it'd be okay. He could always run once whoever it was looked at him. It'd be fine.</p><p>Cautiously, Sonic slipped around the corner to the sliding glass door. He usually didn't like approaching the porch anymore, since Cranky Shovel usually thought he was a raccoon or a cat and tried to shoot him, but now that he wasn't there anymore, he felt a little safer approaching. He peered his head through the now clear sliding glass door.</p><p>The sliding glass door gave access to a big cozy living room with a fire place, and a big kitchen and dining room. It never looked very warm or inviting when the old man was living there, but now that he was gone and it had gotten cleaned up, it looked much brighter. Inside the kitchen was a young woman, with lighter skin, a rounder, curvier body, dark brown eyes under a pair of glasses, and long brown hair she had tied back, preparing something on the counter-top. It smelled sweet... Like chocolate.</p><p>The music was coming from the thin computer on the counter. A laptop. She occasionally went back to it to check something, reading something on it now and then. She scooted a tiny kitten away from the food on the counter with her elbow. She didn't seem to notice Sonic in the doorway, completely engrossed in her work, whatever it was.</p><p>"No, Bella. No chocolate for cats," she scolded playfully.</p><p>The kitten let out an annoyed mewl as she was nudged away again. The girl just laughed again, turning around to open the nearby oven, put on an oven mitt, and pull out a big silver tray. Immediately, the warm, sweet smell doubled as she nudged the oven shut. Sonic's tiny tail twitched wildly behind him.</p><p>"How ya'll doin' out there?" She called out to the big guys out front, setting the tray down and taking off her mitt.</p><p>"Almost done," One called back, coming in through the foyer to talk to her personally; Sonic pulled away when he did. "This sure is a big house for a pretty young lady like yourself."</p><p>The lady laughed again. Something about the way she laughed hit Sonic's ear weird. He wasn't sure why. He winced as he poked his head around to peer through the door again, watching the man smile and wink down at her.</p><p>"Well, aren't you sweet? I just like a lot of space, that's all," the woman sighed somewhat uncomfortably with a forced smile before nodding down to the counter. "Anyway, once ya'll are done, you guys can get the rest of your money, help yourselves to some drink and cookies, and head on out."</p><p>"That's really kind of you, ma'am, thanks so much."</p><p>"Hey, I had to do something to occupy my time, and I wanted to break in the new oven," the lady laughed with a bit more sincerity now. "And anyway, ya'll are hauling furniture in this heat, and I just appreciate that so much."</p><p>"Well, you're very welcome, miss."</p><p>With that, the bigger guy hurried out through the foyer again to finish his work. The woman smiled at him as he headed out, but once he was gone, she looked back down to the countertop with a very uncomfortable grimace, her hands practically gripping the sides of the counter. She didn't look happy at all. She wasn't mad... but she wasn't happy either. Her shoulders were up to her ears.</p><p>Sonic frowned. Did he say something bad to her that he just didn't understand? Maybe he would find out once they were gone...</p><p>But he had been there for too long. He needed to keep moving. He'd come back later that night when everything was quiet. He pushed away from the sliding glass door and dashed off into the fields, into the wood, back to his forest home.</p><p>...Boy, did those chocolate things smell good... She called them cookies, right?</p><p>He needed to try one of those.</p><hr/><p>It was well into the evening now. The sun had fallen a long time ago. The men had been gone for hours, but it still felt like it had only been a few minutes ago. Her nerves were still shot, pins and needles still crawling across her skin.</p><p>Katherine Beaumont was twenty-three years old when she first arrived in Green Hills, fresh from Florida, with little idea of what she was really doing there. All she really knew as that she was there. In a farmhouse. On a sofa. With a big Great Pyrenees dog's head on one leg, a Leonberger puppy's head resting on the other, and a kitten in her lap. Her hood over her big head of hair. And her earbuds in her ears, soft country music blaring in them. Eyes boring into the roaring fireplace.</p><p>Feeling vindicated.</p><p>Her stomach voiced its hunger, but her legs didn't want to move. But she knew she needed food. Or at the very least, she needed to get off the damn sofa. She pulled her phone out of her hoodie pocket, unlocked it, paused the music and opened her recent texts. </p><p>Aubrey was texting her again. Asking if she'd gotten to Green Hills okay, asking if she'd eaten yet. Bless her heart, she was the whole reason she was up here to begin with... Of all the things she left behind, the young tech student and her two year old little girl were the only people Kit missed. She glanced across the image of her pretty red-headed, blue eyed friend and little Cora sleeping against Aubrey's shoulder in the corner. Kit smiled warmly for a moment before texting back.</p><p>'<em>Yeah, I got here fine,'</em> she texted back.<em> 'Just got settled in. I'm fixing to eat. I'll go to bed in a little while. Cora miss me yet?</em>'</p><p>'<em>Started missing you the second you got into the van. She can't wait to visit you, and I can't either! What'cha gonna do tomorrow?'</em> Aubrey texted back.</p><p>'<em>Not sure yet.</em>' Kit scooted the animals off of her lap and legs so she could finally stand up. Bella jumped off of her lap, but the dogs hardly moved. '<em>Probably gonna scope out the farmland and start drawing up some plans. The inheritance money and book profits'll get me through the first couple years, but I don't wanna just sit on it.</em>'</p><p>'<em>Oh, yeah, definitely not.</em>' Kit hurried to the kitchen, thankful to have at least brought a few snacks and essentials with her for the week. She could just heat up some hot dogs since they were easy; maybe have some leftover cookies too, and hey, maybe make some calming tea too, while she was at it. '<em>And you wanna put the loan money to use asap.</em>'</p><p>'<em>Right. I'll probably start patching up the fences and the old barn,</em>' she texted back in between her work, popping hot dogs into the microwave and getting a tea kettle on the stove to boil in between texts. '<em>Thankfully the guy from before left behind some chickens, so that'll be a good starting block to work off of. And there's, like, 25 acres of pasture I wanna dedicate to cows, sheep, pigs and goats and stuff. Maybe if I get zoning approval, I could get a pond for ducks or something.</em>'</p><p>'<em>Oo, that sounds cute! Oh, and maybe some rabbits!'</em></p><p><em>'One thing at a time, Aubrey.</em>' Kit laughed a little at their shared enthusiasm, pulling her food out of the microwave; as excited as she was to get this whole thing started, she had to think practically. '<em>I'm only one person. I can only do so much at once without hiring outside help. I'll start with repairs and dimensions, then I'll get to planting stuff. The chickens are a good start as far as animals go.'</em></p><p>Once she got her dinner, dessert and some water, she whistled for her dogs and started to head for the back door. They quickly jumped up from the sofa and followed after her, Bella still at her heels. She unlocked and opened the sliding glass door, letting the animals out onto the porch before closing it behind her. The dogs settled down around one of the two rocking chairs that she decided to sit in, and Bella jumped up into her lap right away. Thankfully she could trust them not to run. </p><p>She set her plate and glass down on the small table nearby before turning back to her conversation; she could eat and text at the same time.</p><p>'<em>Fair, fair. So how are the neighbors there? Meet any of them yet?'</em> Aubrey had texted her while she was moving.</p><p><em>'Not yet. I heard from some of the movers that everyone here is very tight knit, though,'</em> Kit texted back nervously. <em>'Ya know, the type to greet new neighbors with jello molds and a "Welcome to the neighborhood" cookout. I'll probably meet them tomorrow.'</em></p><p>
  <em>'That. Is so freakin' cute. It's so old school!'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'I guess? One of the movers flirted with me earlier, though, and I'm just gonna be surrounded by, like... 15 strangers? I dunno if it'd be rude to say 'Hey, sorry, I have social anxiety and I'm autistic and too much social interaction will literally make me wanna hit things.''</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'Come on, it's not rude to set boundaries.'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'Yeah, but I moved to their neighborhood and they might offer free food and... I can at least say hi, right?'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'Okay, just... don't let them smother you if you get uncomfortable. You went out there to get AWAY from people who don't respect your boundaries, remember?'</em>
</p><p>Kit frowned at Aubrey's firm insistence, nodding as though she was really there talking to her. Aubrey did have a point; if these people felt a need to intrude on her personal space, she was within her right to tell them to back off.</p><p>
  <em>'Yeah, I know. Don't worry, I won't be a doormat.'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'Good. I want this to be an opportunity for growth for you. And if you need me to come up there and help you out, you call me, alright? And I mean that.'</em>
</p><p><em>'I know, and I will.'</em> Kit waited for a moment, glancing up to the ceiling of her porch for a second. '<em>So... How are my folks doing? They tried to call me a couple times, but I don't wanna talk to them.'</em></p><p>Aubrey didn't text back for a good five minutes, and Kit started to peel and bite at her lips and fingers anxiously until Aubrey finally messaged her back.</p><p>
  <em>'They've mostly just been trying to talk to me since you blocked their numbers. Your mom still feels 'betrayed', apparently, and has just been having an absolute meltdown since you left. Your dad's under this impression that you're just going to be back in a week, and your brothers are just mad.'</em>
</p><p>A knot curled in Kit's stomach. She heaved a soft sigh and leaned back in her chair, looking up to the heavens for help and comfort. She could still remember the absolute fiasco that preceded her arrival to Green Hills; her mother and brothers yelling at her, her sister-in-law and dad rushing to her aid, trying to hide in her bedroom... It was a disaster. She wasn't 100% sure if they could repair things after things cooled down and her family adjusted to the new status quo... or, after the things that were said, if she even wanted to.</p><p>She brought the phone back up to eye level, anxious nausea returning.</p><p>
  <em>'I did the right thing, right?'</em>
</p><p>'<em>Hey. You're 23. You had to leave eventually, but they were keeping you there longer than you should have been regardless of whatever else was going on, you were dying there, and your mom literally put her hands on you in the end. You HAD to leave. Their feelings and reactions aren't your fault.'</em></p><p><em>'I know, but a part of me keeps wondering if I shouldn't have just cut them off the way I did.'</em> She paused, swallowing back her emotions. '<em>I mean. You know, just jumping ship. I could entertain trying to repair things later, after the heat dies down, but... I dunno.'</em></p><p>
  <em>'Kit. We both know you don't wanna have that talk again. We both know why you did it.'</em>
</p><p>Kit had to take a deep breath, leaning back in her seat. Her stomach still twisting in knots, her willingness to continue the conversation fled her.</p><p>'<em>Yeah. I know. Hey, uh, I think my tea's fixing to go off. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?</em>'</p><p>
  <em>'Okay. Sorry, didn't mean for this to get heavy, I just don't want you to start gaslighting yourself again.'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'I know, it's fine, just... feeling guilty. Still dealing with it, you know?'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'I know. Hey, take care of yourself, honey. I'm here if you need anything okay?'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'Okay. Love you.'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'Love you too.'</em>
</p><p>Kit stuffed her phone back in her hoodie's front pocket and heaved out a long sigh, rubbing her hand up her face to try to steady her nerves. She really did just want to forget about her old life and start looking forward, but what she had to look back on was still too fresh right now... The idea of cutting her family out of her life was so... final. Even remembering everything that had happened before, it was still hard to wrap her head around. She didn't wanna go so far, she didn't hate her family enough for that. </p><p>The hiss of the tea kettle caused her to jump. With a small yipe, she picked up Bella, jumped to her feet and raced back inside without thinking of her food left abandoned on the table. The dogs knew better than to jump for her food and if any raccoons or birds tried to approach, the Great Pyranees - Jasper - was a barker; he'd scare them off. She wasn't particularly worried.</p><p>Kit set Bella down on the counter and quickly pulled the tea kettle off the stove, sighing with relief as the high pitched screech died down. She loved the cute floral tea set that Aubrey had gotten for her as a going away present; it was so classy to have and just made her smile to look as as she grabbed the tea bag, sugar and honey from the cupboard. It was nice to fill up a real teapot with hot water and tea, and the sugar cup was equally as cute. The little teaspoons the set came with just completed the entire aesthetic.</p><p>Aubrey knew her so well.</p><p>Once her little teacup was all ready with its fully prepared tea, she took a slow sip and hummed softly, warmth easing her nerves. She picked her kitten up off the counter top and started back for the back porch. She was never much of a coffee person, but sweet tea always made her feel at home.</p><p>She slowly settled back down in her seat and set her teacup and saucer down, reaching for her plate--</p><p>She blinked. Her plate was missing a hot dog and two of the three cookies she'd put there.</p><p>"Um. Hi. What?"</p><p>She looked down to both dogs, still lying down completely passive on the porch. Neither of them could have gotten into it; there would have been nothing left. And there couldn't have been any animals that got into it, or any people; they'd both have barked.</p><p>What?</p><hr/><p>He was so slick. </p><p>The people of Green Hill got used to things going missing pretty quickly, and this new lady was about to be no exception. Most people got annoyed or mad, or just shrugged it off as a raccoon or animal. Or even a ghost. Sonic didn't much care what their explanation was; he just sat in his bush thirty feet away, nibbling on this cookie.</p><p>It was so good! And this meat thing... it was so soft and juicy! He had to find out what it was called!</p><p>"Heheeee..." He giggled under his breath between bites. "Welcome to Green Hills..."</p><p>Keeping his food close to him, Sonic raced back to hide under the back porch to listen in. He needed to gauge this woman's disposition; her possible reactions, so see if she was safe to be around, or to hear what this juicy meat thing was called. He poked his head cautiously around the wood, watching the lady leave the porch with her two dogs and her cat in hand, looking around the empty grassland.</p><p>She was looking for someone.</p><p>"Well... shoot," she muttered, something of an amused edge to her tone as she pulled out her cell phone. "I guess <em>someone </em>was hungry."</p><p>She brought her cell phone up to her ear, turning around on her heel and whistling for her dogs as she headed back to her porch. Sonic watched her carefully and waited for her and her dogs to go back before inching around to the steps of the porch to watch. The dogs didn't notice him, and neither did she. She just went back inside to make some more food, apparently.</p><p>"Hey, Aubrey?" She started, pausing for a second. "Yeah, someone stole my food. ...Yeah, I dunno, I just got up to get my tea, I come out, and half my dinner's gone."</p><p>There was another small pause, and Sonic heard a few beeps.</p><p>"Yeah, I thought so too, but like. Jasper didn't bark, and he barks at everything. But it wasn't the dogs, cause only, like. One hot dog and a couple cookies were missing."</p><p>Hot dog? That's what it was called? A hot dog?</p><p>He took another bite as he continued eavesdropping.</p><p>Well... it sure was good.</p><p>"No, Aubrey, I don't think it was the chickens. I did hear people talking about someone called Crazy Carl or something, but they always say he's pretty harmless," she explained over the phone, and Sonic couldn't help stifling his laugh; he liked Carl. He was fun. "I don't think it was him. He's just some old guy who works at the drug store and chases around some ghosts in the woods or something. ...I dunno, maybe it was."</p><p>A few more beeps, and something slamming shut. After a few more seconds, she started coming out again. A small gasp escaping him, Sonic ashed back to his safe bush around the corner. He heard her exit out onto the porch, down the stairs, and onto the grassland again. Poking his head out of his bush, he watched her dogs follow her out onto the grass. She knelt down with a plate, setting it down before standing back up and brushing the dirt and grass off her pants.</p><p>"Nah, it's fine. I don't think it's a ghost or the fae or anything. Probably just someone looking for food. And hey, if all they want is a hot dog, that's fine with me," she insisted with a shrug, turning back around. "As long as they don't steal the plate and leave MY food alone. I just had to, like... bounce this off someone. I'm gonna test this out for a couple days or something. I'll call ya back, okay? ...A'ight. Tell Cora I love her and miss her. I'll call you guys tomorrow. ...Alright. Love you."</p><p>He heard the wood of the banister above him creak a bit. She didn't say anything, but she didn't sound angry when she was talking. Sonic glanced out to the food in the middle of the grass, unsure of whether or not to try to get it or not... It felt... unsafe. Like a trick. Like a net was going to come flying out at him if he...</p><p>"A'ight. Goin' inside now," she called out into the wind, amusement edging her tone, almost laughing. "If anyone wants food, it ain't gonna be from my plate, but you're welcome to what's out there right now. Just don't take the actual plate, cause those cost money. Have a good night.... forest... ghost... gremlin... person."</p><p>Needless to say, most of what the woman said completely went over the child's head. He was certain that she wasn't even fully aware something - or someone - was really out there, and as far as she knew, she could have been talking at nothing. Was she another 'Crazy Carl'? Just one that provided food?</p><p>His ears twitched when he heard the dogs walk into the den and the sliding glass door shut. Overcome with hunger, he raced out onto the grass, snatched up the food left for him, and raced back out into the woods. </p><p>Sonic looked down to the abundance of food left in his hands, and twisted around to look back at where he once was...</p><hr/>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. It Was Their Thing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>August 15th, 2020</strong>
</p><p>He called his new friend the Lunch Lady.</p><p>It wasn't an instant nickname. At first, he called her the Disney Princess, cause all the animals seemed to flock to her. He wasn't sure how, but over time, a lot of animals came to her house and her farm: A horse, sheep, pigs, cows, goats, bunnies, ducks... but it didn't stop there. A lot of the neighborhood dogs, cats, raccoons, mice and squirrels often came to her house to get something to eat. She left out food for all the animals whenever they wandered by her home. She seemed to enjoy it, and it took a burden off of the rest of the town who didn't like pests scrounging around their trash cans looking for food.</p><p>He didn't start calling her the Lunch Lady until, much like today, she started taking her afternoon walks through the woods with her two dogs and her cat. She called them Jasper, Coal and Bella, but he called them Barker, Alert, and 'that thing that always hissed at him and knew where he was no matter where he was seriously does that thing have radar or something what even ARE YOU?' </p><p>Or just Radar, for brevity's sake.</p><p>Every afternoon, when the sun was right in the middle of the sky, she'd come out like clockwork with her two pets and her service dog - Alert, the one wearing the vest all the time - with a small bag slung over her shoulder, usually wearing the same clothes as she was wearing yesterday. Most people in the town all wore different clothes every day, but she usually wore the same clothes when she could help it. She used to smell a lot, until she started coming out here every day three years ago. Then she smelled like flowers. She probably started washing her clothes all the time after that.</p><p>Now thirteen-year-old Sonic would hide behind trees, watching cautiously as she strolled through the woods, his speed causing a small breeze to brush against the exposed skin of her arms or the back of her neck. She almost never wore shorts; almost always leggings, pants, or long skirts. Radar always looked at him when he passed by, but Lunch Lady always went out of her way to ignore her. </p><p>He followed her through the woods, down their path, and down to their clearing just outside of his cave. She knew full well it was there, made privy to its presence several years prior, but he never liked her going in there. She knew that. She pulled off her backpack, set it down, and pulled out a small blanket, letting the dogs and cats settle down. She laid out the blanket and tied off the leashes to a nearby tree.</p><p>She wiped her hands on her pants for some reason before looking around and sighing. She always smiled when she started looking around, and Sonic always felt like she was smiling at him when she did that.</p><p>"Hi again, little wood gremlin," she called out into the wind, seemingly to no one, but he knew it was at him; for some reason, her little hello gave him a jolt of excitement through his spine. 'Wood Gremlin' was apparently her nickname for him. He wasn't 100% sure how he felt about it, but it always felt affectionate coming from her now. "Let's see what we got today."</p><p>Lunch Lady walked over to his cave and knelt down to the small camo-cloth that she'd left behind for him to hide the opening to his cave. Now, he used it to hide the used plate and cup, and his own little presents he left behind for her. She lifted it up, finding the dirty ceramic plate, the clear glass, the empty water bottle, a collection of papers, some shells, some rocks, and some bird feathers. </p><p>"Oh, wow!" Her voice sounded like she was lighting up when she saw this.</p><p>She picked it up and carried it all back to her spot, sitting down and sorting through it all. Sonic settled down into a bush not too far away and watched her take everything off the plate. She started pocketing the rocks and shells very carefully in a small pocket in her backpack, and the feathers went into another small bag. The papers - his drawings and little torn magazine pages - went into books.</p><p>She giggled softly as she continued.</p><p>"I guess you liked the pizza I gave you last time," she called out to him.</p><p>She was right; he loved yesterday's lunch, as he did most days. Since she started coming out here every day, she said that everything she brought out was handmade, unless she said otherwise. Sure, she'd sometimes leave food out for him for breakfast or dinner too, just in case he wasn't snagging food from Donut Lord or Knife Commander, but she always came out to give him lunch.</p><p>Hence, Lunch Lady. The drawings and gifts were how he communicated how well he liked what she gave him. It was their thing. It was always super satisfying to see how happy they made her.</p><p>"If you liked the pizza, I think you're gonna love what I got for ya today," Lunch Lady called out to him again, finally storing his gifts and the dirty dishes before digging into her bag for the lunch box.</p><p>Sonic leaned forward, his spines curling forward with anticipation as he watched her open it and pull out clean cutlery, a fresh water bottle, a thermos, and a small box. When she opened it, a warm, spicy smell filled the forest air and made his tiny tail twitch and flick behind him. His stomach practically growled, begging for her to show him what it was. She quickly removed the contents of the box with a spoon and fork, and he found it to be something white and soft... then some peas, then something brown, really meaty and spicy smelling. </p><p>She set everything back down on his camo-cloth off of the blanket for him. After setting everything down, she smiled and folded her arms, looking down to the plate with a sense of pride. Her face always turned this shade of pink or red whenever she brought the food out. That was how Sonic knew sharing food made her so happy. The same thing happened when she shared food with other people in Green Hills, or the people that came to visit her house.</p><p>"It's mashed potatoes, peas and steak! Can't believe I've gone this long without making you steak," Lunch Lady chuckled, reading over for the thermos to unscrew the top. "I always associated it with dinner, so I guess it just never occurred to me. But I guess I just wanted to see what you thought. And here's some milk to go with it. I know you like milk!"</p><p>Oh, did he. She poured him a big glass-full from the thermos before screwing the lid back on tightly and putting it back in her bag. After that, she pulled out those soft brown--oh! Brownies! She put a package of brownies down beside everything for him, along with an apple.</p><p>"And some brownies for dessert. Haven't had time to do as much baking as I'd like so they're store bought," she explained apologetically with a small shrug. "But I figured you'd appreciate it anyway. And, of course, you need fruit. At least, I assume you need fruit. So... apple."</p><p>As usual, the Lunch Lady was always right. Sonic beamed down at the meal he was left, and was thankful that Lunch Lady knew by now never to stick around for long. She gathered up her bag, pulled up her blanket, stored it, and untied her pets' leashes. She smiled into the wind, nodding towards where she believed her friend was. It was such a kind, warm smile.</p><p>Lunch Lady's smile always felt like home to him.</p><p>"Well, lemme know what you think. I'll bring ya something familiar tomorrow. I'll cya around!"</p><p>She whistled for her cat and dogs, and while Radar looked Sonic directly in the eye, she still followed Lunch Lady's command to follow after her. The dogs followed suit as well. Sonic waited until Lunch Lady was a good distance away before zipping close to the cloth. </p><p>In the blink of an eye, he was able to gather everything up one at a time into his cave, covering the opening to his cave with his makeshift wood-and-leaf door on his last trip inside. He always wrapped his camo-cloth around his neck like a little bib, like he'd seen them do on TV. He wasn't sure why they did that, but it was what people did, so it just felt right to him. He immediately tore into the brown thing; the steak.</p><p>A strong hum rocked through his throat as he chewed and tasted it. It was still warm! It was soft and tender, and spiced! It was soooo good! Lunch Lady's food always made his quills stand up on end.</p><p>Along with Donut Lord, Pretzel Lady and Crazy Carl, Lunch Lady was among one of Sonic's favorite people in Green Hills. </p><p>Hey, what was gonna be on after lunch? Everyone usually played something different around lunch time. The bar usually played sports, Pretzel Lady did her Pretzel Lady things around now, Lunch Lady watched cartoons... So many decisions! Maybe he could roll around the farms to hang out with the farm animals too! They were kinda slow and lazy, but they were tons of fun!</p><p>After lunch.</p><hr/><p>Now twenty-eight, Kit had finally found her place in Green Hills. She was comfortable and content. A far cry from when she first left her hometown five years ago. She still felt a little alone and isolated, aside from the once-every-few-months visits she'd started getting from Aubrey and Cora, but at least she had found security, peace and financial stability. And hey, the town seemed to like her well enough, and her situation with her family was much quieter than it was five years ago... for better or worse.</p><p>She didn't know the townsfolk too personally, but at least she knew them on a first name basis. </p><p>By then, her biggest source of income was selling produce at the farmer's market, or having people stop by to purchase something personally. Handling such a big farm by herself used to be a lot of work, but now that most of it was automated, it was a lot easier to handle. The cows and goats pretty much milked and fed themselves these days, much of the other animals only needed feeding, and much of the produce was watered through rain or the automatic irrigation/sprinkler system. Honestly, the rabbits were the most high maintenance thing on the farm; even the milking and watering systems were pretty uncomplicated. She did often have to clean up after the animals, clear out their water, clear out weeds, and do the occasional check up to make sure everything was up to snuff, but for the most part, it wasn't quite as much the hard, back-breaking work it used to be.</p><p>It was a very comfortable life she'd built for herself, now that she'd finally settled down. Often times she could go full weeks without doing much besides doing checkup rounds with her horse and dogs, and still be making a profit.</p><p>She even had the personal comfort to dress however she wanted, cut her hair, let it grow back out to its current medium-length and dye it dark purple and bright blue-and-pink streaks, and revel in the personal freedom she now had.</p><p>It was nice. She was finally happy. </p><p>These days, she had a lot of free time on her hand. In the afternoon, when she got back from giving lunch to her little woodland friend, she'd often sit in the living room with her pets and her service dog watching a movie, unbeknownst to a little shadow looming over her shoulder some days. Everyone felt like that in Green Hills, but no one really minded it. Everyone had a different name for it; 'The Raccoons', 'Woodland Spirits', 'The Blue Devil'...</p><p>Kit was sure it was her little wood gremlin popping in to watch cartoons with her. And she didn't mind that one bit. She kept her blinds open for the little thing to peer in, and made it as regular as she could.</p><p>After her lunch and her cartoons, though, she had to get back to work. </p><hr/><p>Angel Isle Farm was initially only twenty-five acres when Kit initially bought the land, but she bought out another twenty-five acres over the years, so it took several hours of a horse ride to trek the whole thing across. Most of it was dedicated to pasture of grazing grass for her dozens of cattle, sheep and goats, but much more was dedicated to crops; fields of wheat, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, radishes, green beans and more, all evenly spaced out from one another and separated by latices, watered by automated sprinklers and irrigation. When she planned it all out, she made sure to leave rows of space in between for people or horses to walk through without damaging the plants, and she was able to look around and a glance to see if any of the plants were discolored or had weeds that needed dealing with.</p><p>But that was only the tip of the iceberg. She still had to check out the barn, greenhouses and the aquaponics house. The barn stored all the milk from the automatic milking station, and the greenhouses and aquaponics house grew everything that Montana wasn't suited for, or was out of season. Those were her real money-makers. The small orchard she was investing in on the west side of the property was going to make her future generations a killing, most probably.</p><p>Hearing some rustling through the wheat grass, she gave a light tug on the reins of her Appaloosa horse, Bonnie, to urge her to slow down. A small stray cat cut through the grass, giving a little mewl as it passed by and crossed through. Kit gave it a critical look, waiting for it to pass before nudging Bonnie's sides with her heels to urge her to keep moving. It wasn't uncommon for animals to wander around looking for food. She didn't mind as long as they didn't eat the produce, which they rarely did. They just went for the food she left out for them, and moved on.</p><p>Finally passing through the wheat fields, where the path split off in towards either the barn, the greenhouse, the aquaponics house, or the horse trail in the woods, Kit twisted Bonnie's reins towards the barn. The barn was nestled close to the opening to the woods...</p><p>...so it shouldn't have been a surprise to see Crazy Carl stepping through the brush with one of his crazy devices in one hand, a big bear trap in the other. He stepped through the trees and onto the path; not in her direction, just onto the path. He didn't even seem to notice her. In fact, he seemed ready to go further into the woods. </p><p>She blinked in surprise, tugging on Bonnie's reins for a second to make her stop.</p><p>"Carl?"</p><p>Carl paused, twisting around when he heard his name. Noticing her, he sat up a bit, just as surprised as she was, then sauntered over to her. He walked slowly, so as not to startle Bonnie, and she nudged Bonnie's sides to make her walk over to him a bit.</p><p>"Ooh, Kathie," he called over to her; he never could get a handle on her nickname, bless the poor old man. "I'm sorry, I hope I didn't scare you."</p><p>"It's okay, you didn't," Kit assured him, wincing slightly. "What'cha doing out here? You're not usually this far out back."</p><p>"I was out lookin' for the Blue Devil again," Carl explained, rather certainly, with a somewhat senile but fervent nod. "I almost caught him last night, you know."</p><p>"I'm sure..." Kit murmured quietly, glancing out into the woods.</p><p>"You believe me, don'tcha?" He asked hopefully when he started detecting some doubt from Kit.</p><p>"I won't say I don't," Kit dodged with a meek shrug, scratching her arm nervously. "But whether he is or not, if he is... he's probably harmless. Probably just wants to be left alone."</p><p>"I promise you, Ms. Kathie, I'm gonna catch 'im," Carl swore up to her, turning around on his heel and starting back off into the wood. "I'm gonna catch 'im! And when I do, I'm gonna show every! Ol' Crazy Carl ain't as crazy as they all say!"</p><p>"O-Okay, but Carl, that goes further into the woods! Go through my house!" Kit tried to warn him, but to little avail; the poor old man was far too determined... or just too hard of hearing and too far in by the time she started talking. </p><p>A concerned knot twisting in her gut, she snapped Bonnie's reins, urging her to start down the path into the woods after Carl. She didn't like to deviate from her schedule, but she had to make sure the old guy was alright and didn't get lost. It wasn't hard to catch up to the old man on horseback; Bonnie didn't even have to run, it only took a minute or two of a trot.</p><p>"Carl, you're gonna get lost," Kit insisted, concern ebbing her voice. "Go back through my house, okay?"</p><p>"Ms. Kathie, I've been camping in these woods since before you were born," Carl insisted, kneeling down to start setting one of his traps. "I know where I'm going."</p><p>Kit huffed at his second use of 'Ms'. Most people in Green Hills knew not to use 'ma'am' or 'miss' with her, people here were a lot more accepting on non-binary people than she expected, but Carl - being as old and not all mentally there as he was - couldn't quite wrap his head around remembering. Kit always had to bite her tongue to keep herself from snapping at him. Instead of urging for him not to call her that, she opted to keep the topic to getting Carl to leave.</p><p>"Carl, no offense, but you got lost in a Walmart last week..." Kit frowned at her own statement, shaking her head. "Okay, bad example, even I get lost in those. Point is being by yourself too far out in the woods is a bad idea, and if you don't go back out, I'm gonna have to call Tom to pull you out again. Which I can do since the woods are my on property now, remember?"</p><p>This thinly veiled threat was enough cause for pause for Carl, making Kit's shoulders rise slightly. Carl rose to his feet, giving Kit a critical look. It was a strange sight to see, since he was usually so soft faced and puppy-dog-eyed.</p><p>"You know he's real too, don't you? You know I didn't just make him up, right?"</p><p>Kit's lips pursed as she glanced down to the dirt that Bonnie's hooves occasionally kicked and dug at mindlessly. She really didn't know how to feel about Carl's theory or what he really planned to do if he managed to actually catch her gremlin friend, if indeed they were the same entity. All she really knew was that she didn't want to engage with it at all.</p><p>"Carl... just..." Kit rubbed her face again. "Don't make me call Tom. I'll let you know if I see anything blue, okay? Just... go home, please."</p><p>Carl deflated. Without another word, he gave a defeated little nod and 'okay' under his breath and trudged out down the path back where he came from. Kit watched after him, swallowing the lump in her throat as her shoulders fell and her eyes wandered to the woodland floor again. She didn't want to be mean to Carl, he really wasn't hurting anyone, but she didn't want him scaring her little wood buddy or getting himself hurt.</p><p>She hoped she wasn't just making excuses to push people aw...</p><p>She shook her head and bit the inside of her cheek. No. No, she wasn't. That was the gaslighting again.</p><p>Enough of that. She had to do something about the trap before someone or something wandered by and got--</p><p>
  <strong> <em>SNAP</em> </strong>
</p><p>As a brush of wind barely brazed her exposed skin, Kit flinched at the snapping sound of the bear trap suddenly going off, seemingly with no trigger. Bonnie jumped and snorted, frightened by the very sudden noise, and Kit had to pull back on her reins and stroke her neck to help her settle back down again.</p><p>"Woah, hey, sssh, ssh, easy, Bonnie, it's okay, it's okay..." </p><p>Once Bonnie was back on all fours and settled down, Kit looked down in her own panic, glancing down to the now activated trap, clamped around nothing. Her brow furrowing, she threw her leg over and hopped off of Bonnie's back, kneeling down to the trap. </p><p>Nothing seemed to have touched it. It just seemed to go off on its own. But she knew better; it was weight activated. She scratched a confused itch on the back of her head for a moment, frowning at the trap. Without sufficient strength or the tools to remove the pinned down trap herself, she was most likely going to be forced to just abandon it now that it wasn't going to hurt anyone. She could always come back for it later, or ask Tom to come pull it out, if he wasn't doing anything.</p><p>She snorted. 'If'. </p><p>As Kit was about to get up, though, something glistened in the corner of her eye. She took a second glance at it and scooted closer to it, assuming it was just a shiny rock or a shell. Ever the collector of shiny things, though, she was prompted to give it a closer look regardless of what it might be. Even if it turned out to be mundane, her magpie instincts were on high alert. She sifted around through the leaves and dirt for a moment until she found what she was looking for.</p><p>What she found... stunned her. Out of the leaves and grass, she found a single, thin, bright cobalt, shimmering... thing. It was a little hard, but its texture was smooth to the touch, with a soft, almost furry underside. It tingled a bit when she rubbed it between her thumb and index finger... almost like when her foot fell asleep, or her migraine meds were working.</p><p>She wasn't quite sure what it was, but... oh well. It was blue and it was shiny, so she was keeping it. </p><p>After pocketing the tiny blue thing, she finally smiled.</p><hr/><p>Lunch Lady saw the trap. He'd pulled a Crazy Carl on her!</p><p>Poking his head out from behind a tree a good thirty feet away, Sonic tried his best to keep his distance and see what reaction he'd gotten from her. He'd never pranked Lunch Lady before; he wasn't sure what reaction he was gonna get from her. He knew she was cool and had a sense of humor, but he wasn't sure if she knew she'd been pranked or if she was just scared.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Lunch Lady, don't be mad, please don't be mad..." He quietly begged, not really hoping she would hear but hoping the powers that be would hear his silent plea for her to have a sense of humor, his fingers nervously drumming along the bark.</p><p>Thankfully, much to his relief, once she put something in her pocket, she stood to her feet, rubbed her hands on her legs, and smiled.</p><p>"Alright, wood gremlin, you got me," she called out to him. "I get it, you pulled a Carl on me. Very funny. Don't do it again, though, I got a weak heart and falling off a horse hurts. And be nice to Carl, okay? He's havin' a rough time lately. He's just an old man, ya know?"</p><p>Sonic let out a relieved sigh, putting a gloved hand to his chest. Lunch Lady turned around and pulled herself back onto her horse, urging her to turn around and start back down the trail towards the farm again.</p><p>"Okay, note to self, don't scare Lunch Lady. Lunch Lady's nice, she brings food, she has a weak heart, don't scare Lunch Lady. Especially when she's on a horse. Note stored."</p><p>But hey, he ran so fast that he didn't even scare the horse! It was more the trap than him.</p><p>...</p><p>"Yeah, okay, that was dumb."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. If The Game's Against Yourself, Do You Win or Lose?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Later on that very night, as she did many nights after a long day of work, Kit retreated to her bedroom with Bella, Jasper and Coal in her bed. After a long, relaxing shower, she sat on her bed with her laptop in front of her and a plate of food on her nightstand, animals surrounding her amid the sheets. Rocking back and forth mindlessly, she gently ran a brush through her hair to tame its new knots, watching whatever Youtube videos came up on her feed until a notification caused her phone to vibrate next to her.</p><p>Putting her brush down, she picked it up and saw Aubrey was asking to call her. Responding with only the thumbs up emoji, Aubrey called her, and Kit answered, putting it on speaker before putting it back down.</p><p>"Hello?"</p><p>"<em>Hey, girl!</em>" Aubrey called over from the other line, Italian-accented voice sweet as honey as always. "<em>Just calling to see how you were doing. </em><em>Cora's here too.</em>"</p><p>Kit sat up, her eyes lighting up when she heard the seven-year-old little girl was on the other end with her mom.</p><p>"Hi, Cora!"</p><p>"<em>Hi, Nini Kitty!</em>" Cora called excitedly from over her mom's shoulder. "<em>I miss you!"</em></p><p>Kit giggled at Cora's decided title for her. She used to be 'Aunt Kit' until Aubrey was able to explain her being non-binary to Cora. After that sunk in with her, she adapted by switching to something similar to what she called Aubrey's older brother. It made Kit's feelings around Aubrey a little awkward and complicated, but it was still just a term of affection and endearment. She appreciated it nonetheless. </p><p>"I miss you too, honey," Kit laughed back down to her. "You enjoying your summer?"</p><p>
  <em>"Yep! I'm gonna be in 2nd grade next month!"</em>
</p><p>"Yeah, I heard! You excited?"</p><p>"<em>Yeah! Mama found me a new school that's got better wheelchair ramps, and buttons that open all the doors, and bathrooms with dis-a-bility stalls,"</em> Cora explained, and Kit could practically hear her affirmative nods and her bright smile. "<em>So now I can get around everywhere even if I have to use my wheelchair!"</em></p><p>"Oh, good," Kit sighed with relief. "I know ya'll were having some trouble with that..."</p><p>"<em>Yeah, it's just gonna be for a year or two,</em>" Aubrey confessed. "<em>I'm thinking about moving."</em></p><p>"Really. You're thinking about relocating from Satan's Asshole, Florida?" Kit muttered with a sarcastic eyeroll, fully aware that Aubrey gave her permission to curse around Cora. "Can't imagine why."</p><p>"<em>Very funny,</em>" Aubrey shot back, giggling softly. "<em>We were thinking of, uh... coming up to Green Hills. Since someone we know is up there and is familiar with the place.</em>"</p><p>Kit's smile fell, and a heat rushed up through her chest, cheeks and ears. She dropped the brush in her hand and scooted back. She could hear Cora giggling behind her hands on the other end, and her heart fluttered.</p><p>"U-Up here?" Aubrey laughed quietly, and Kit's free hands gripped and played with her hair. "Uuh, u-uhm... C-Cool! Y-Yeah, it'd be cool to have ya'll up here. You guys would l-live--lo--like it up here. For sure."</p><p>Kit rubbed her hot face as she stumbled between 'like' and 'love', overhearing Aubrey and Cora laughing affectionately on their end. She knew they weren't laughing at her, but stuttering around Aubrey was especially embarrassing, and Kit didn't embarrass easy. She knocked off her glasses in order to cover her face, muffling her groaning with her palms.</p><p>"<em>Glad you approve,</em>" Aubrey chuckled warmly. "<em>But yeah, I can get a tech job just about anywhere, especially in the West. So I figured... ya know, since you're there anyway, why not, ya know?"</em></p><p>"Hah, yeah..." Kit rubbed the rest of her blush away and searched the bed for her fallen glasses, sliding them back onto her face and clearing her throat. "If you want, I can ask around for anyone who might be hiring."</p><p>"<em>Aww, Kit, that's super sweet of you, I'd really appreciate that.</em>" Aubrey grunted as she seemed to adjust herself wherever she was sitting. "<em>Cora, hun, you wanna start getting ready for bed?"</em></p><p>"<em>Okay,</em>" Cora sighed in a brief pout, her tone perking up almost right away. "<em>Ni'Night, Nini Kitty!"</em></p><p>"Ni'Night, Cora," Kit called down to her, adjusting herself to lay down as she grabbed the phone to plop it down on her chest.</p><p>After a short pause, it was just her and Aubrey. A small silence hung between the two of them, and Kit nervously chewed at the inside of her lips and cheeks as she waited for Aubrey to say something... Or... was she supposed to say some--</p><p>"<em>So, I wanna pitch something to you."</em></p><p>"Oh! Y-Yeah, sure, go for it." </p><p>"<em>I was hoping, once I got up there, that I could kinda... ditch the tech thing and try for something more creatively focused," </em>Aubrey admitted with a sheepish tone of voice. "<em>Tech work pays well and everything, and it really helped me kickstart a good life for me and Cora, but like... I dunno. I never envisioned it being what I wanted to do with my life, ya know?</em>"</p><p>"No, yeah, I get what you mean," Kit agreed with a small nod. "You've been pretty finance and business savvy your whole life and you got pretty good stock, real estate, savings, credit... all that jazz. So you could leave the tech field pretty safely. What'd you have in mind?"</p><p>"<em>Well... I was thinking of going into music. Mainly instrumentals and orchestration, sound mixing, stuff like that,"</em> Aubrey explained almost shyly, in that way that made Kit smile warmly no matter how hard she tried not to. "<em>I've been toying around with a couple programs in my spare time and on the weekends, but I just don't have enough free time to, ya know... really fully get to know all of it. So I'm thinking once I get somewhere quieter like where you are, I'd be able to focus on something a lot closer to my heart.</em>"</p><p>"Oh, yeah, no, I totally get it. Green Hills is definitely the place for stuff like that," Kit continued with a small laugh. "I found myself here after years of bullshit. It'd be a great place for you to focus on music. And Cora would love it here too. The kids are all super nice, and most places around here are pretty accessible for kids with handicaps and disabilities."</p><p>"<em>Yeah, you told me! So... Heh, yeah, that and Cora just keeps going on and on asking when we were gonna be able to see you next and ya know...</em>" Aubrey laughed almost bashfully. "<em>I figured we might as well just move there since she wants to see you so much. I swear, she sees you like a second mom sometimes."</em></p><p>"Ooooh, Aubrey, don't tempt me," Kit half-joked, eyes crawling to the ceiling with a prayer for help. "I might just come down there and adopt her if you start giving me ideas."</p><p>The two shared shy, awkward laughter for a moment before it trailed off and died. Kit reached over to the glass of water on her nightstand, downing half the glass to drown her embarrassed, anxious misery for a moment before Aubrey cleared her throat.</p><p>"<em>So, uh, yeah! That's what's going on with me and Cora! What're you up to?</em>"</p><p>"Eh, you know. Nothing new going on. Just watching Youtube and eatin'," Kit explained with a mild shrug. "Everything's about as uninteresting as it usually is."</p><p>"<em>You continue to say on the off-chance it finally triggers something movie-worthy to happen,</em>" Aubrey chuckled to herself.</p><p>"Yeah, the trade-off for security is that it's fucking <strong><em>boring</em></strong> up here," Kit groaned, rolling her eyes and snorting slightly.</p><p>"<em>Weeell,</em>" Aubrey almost giggled on her end. "<em>If it helps, there was one other thing I was hoping to talk to you about once Cora left, if you're open for coordinating something.</em>"</p><p>Kit squinted at her phone slightly, raising an eyebrow at it.</p><p>"Okay..."</p><p>"<em>Okay, so, I was sitting in the bathtub treating myself, just kinda zoning out, and I got to thinking: I haven't seen my bestie for almost two years since Cora and I came up to visit her to check out how the farm's doing,</em>" Aubrey started, anticipation rising in her voice. "<em>And I know she's been working very hard lately, and since everything's automated and she's been making friends who could look after things for maybe a week or two, I figure... maybe she could use a vacation.</em>"</p><p>"And what kind of vacation were you thinking about inviting this hypothetical bestie onto?" Kit laughed with a roll of her eyes, absentmindedly running her fingers through her hair to check for more knots after realizing she'd forgotten to continue brushing her hair.</p><p>"<em>Can you saaaaay a week long stay at a resort hotel iiiiin Disney World?!</em>"</p><p>Kit almost choked on air at Aubrey's suggestion, a jolt of childhood excitement rocking through her spine as she sat up very suddenly.</p><p>"You're kidding!"</p><p>"<em>I already have everything reserved--well, not completely,</em>" Aubrey explained, equal jubilation in her voice as she continued. "<em>I know you don't like things dropped on you like that, so I have everything pulled up, and I just wanted to hear what you thought before I pressed the okay button to make the reservations. I know everything you like already.</em>"</p><p>"H-How--Aubrey, a week in Disney World costs--that's gotta be thousands of dollars. How'd you--"</p><p>"<em>Oh, Kit, come on, we just talked about this! I've been saving up for the last couple years, and you know I've been playing with real estate and stocks and that kind of stuff. If I can afford to drop my life to move to Montana, I can afford to treat my daughter and my bestie to a week in Disney World.</em>" Aubrey giggled on her end of the line. "<em>And I can get us Fast Passes to skip all the lines and everything! You've been working hard for five years, you deserve to have the week of your life. So I was thinking maybe next week, so we can get something in for Cora before school starts, you could fly down, and we could... ya know... spend the week together! Just the three of us!</em>"</p><p>"Oh, so... wait, my parents didn't ask you to--"</p><p>"<em>O-Oh, no, no, honey, no. This isn't me trying to set you up with your parents,</em>" Aubrey assured her with newfound sincerity in her voice when Kit voiced her almost automatic, panicked concern. "<em>I wouldn't dump that on you. That's... that's a whole other situation that needs to be handled a lot more delicately and only when you're ready to tackle it. At... some point, sure, but on you and your folks' time, ya know? This is just... me wanting to do something fun, and me wanting to give you and Cora a fun experience. You've been dealing with a lot of stuff and you... deserve a break, you know? You love Disney World, even as... over-commercialized as the company is and as unoriginal as all their movies have been. We can at least enjoy the rides, eat food and watch the fireworks for a week, right?</em>"</p><p>"R-Right. Just..." Kit ran a hand through her bangs and her hair, flopping back onto her pillow. "This is... wow."</p><p>"<em>So what do you think? You'd have a week to get all your affairs in order and make sure everything'll be taken care of while you're gone, so... you wanna give it a shot?</em>"</p><p>"I..." Her face flushed and her chest filled with a foreign emotion, Kit let out a small laugh. "Well... I don't see why not. So... next week?"</p><p>Aubrey squealed with delight and Kit heard the click of a mouse on the other end. Kit trusted Aubrey to have coordinated everything to how Kit would have wanted it; Aubrey knew her well enough for it.</p><p>"<em>Yay!! I can't wait! I'll get everything squared away and I'll keep you posted every step of the way! You're gonna have such a great time, I promise! And don't worry, I'll make sure your family stays miles away from the whole thing,</em>" Aubrey swore with added firmness in her tone. "<em>Just the three of us. Cross my heart.</em>"</p><p>Kit chuckled warmly at her earnest sincerity.</p><p>"I believe you, Aubrey... Thanks again. You're the best."</p><p>"<em>You too, honey.</em>" Aubrey giggled sweetly. "<em>I miss you bunches. I can't wait to see you again.</em>"</p><p>"Me too," Kit sighed softly, hand flopping over her chest. "I'll cya then. Keep me posted. Love you."</p><p>"<em>Love you too!</em>"</p><p>Kit was the first to hang up. She dropped her phone beside her, her eyes casting up to the ceiling with a tight frown.</p><p>It wasn't the first time she wondered to what extent that 'I love you' went between her and Aubrey. 'Love you' was never restricted to romance for either of them, just a close bond, but she was never sure if she just felt a sisterly kinship, a crush, or if she was so affection starved and socially isolated that she might have mistook affection for romantic love. It was probably the latter, though. Heaven knew she had a crappy enough upbringing for it, and with her only example of a relationship being her parents and their failing marriage, she wouldn't have been surprised if she was subconsciously clinging to the only positive relationship she had.</p><p>If it was anything, it was probably just mild infatuation from  that positive connection. Nothing else.</p><p>...</p><p>Her eyes widened.</p><p>Oh, who the hell was she kidding? </p><p>"Shit. <em>Damn</em>. <strong><em>Fuck</em></strong>." She took her glasses off and tossed them onto the nightstand; as much as she had tried to push it away from her brain to spare her own heart of the anxiety and potential heartbreak, she really couldn't deny it anymore. "I'm in love with Aubrey."</p><p>She pulled the pillow under her head over her face and groaned into it long and hard, earning her pets' attention. She was going to be spending the next few hours groaning, swearing, and screaming into it, gripping and clawing at it like a lifeline.</p><p>"Of fucking course I'm in love with her! Who wouldn't?! She's fucking <em><strong>perfect</strong></em>! She's smart and sweet and my best friend and always there for me and fucking <strong><em>gorgeous</em></strong>!" She growled in frustration into her pillow. "Sure! Why not?! My relationships aren't complicated enough with my shitty relationship with my family and my basic association with my community! Let's give me romantic feelings for my best friend who's WAY out of my league! Why the <strong><em>fuck</em> </strong>not?!"</p><p>Hours of sleep were definitely going to be lost. Again.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>August 16th, 2020</strong>
</p><p>
  <b>Green Hills Middle School Playoffs</b>
</p><p><b></b>There were only a handful of deviations of where Lunch Lady dropped off Sonic's meals at. Something she had come to realize about him pretty quickly was that he. Loved. Sports. He wasn't sure how he got that across; maybe from all the torn sports magazine pages or baseball cards, but either way, Lunch Lady seemed to mysteriously start showing up to baseball games without much outside cause one day.</p><p>He could always tell when she was there when the smell of hot dogs and hamburgers was thick in the air, and the sizzle of the grill blended with the umpire's calls, children debating plays and parents calling to their kids from the stands. Lunch Lady always stationed herself away from the field, close to the woods, with her outdoor grill, making food for the guests and the players to nibble on throughout the game. Sonic always heard her talking about how she hated to hear when the kids got hungry during the game, so she wanted to make sure they kept their strength up.</p><p>But he knew why she was really there.</p><p>And when he dashed close to the field to get the best view he could, his two paper plates were right where he expected them to be; three hot dogs, two hamburgers, and a plate full of french fries and onion rings with napkins. Next to them, napkins and a soda.</p><p>His tiny tail flicked and he knelt down to gather it all up instantly.</p><p>"Lunch Lady does it again," he practically chuckled before racing past her station to his usual spot behind the dugout. </p><p>The Green Hills Meadowlarks were winner, obviously. They were the best team in Montana. He didn't know all of the team members' names, but he recognized them by certain traits or things they were known for.</p><p>Redhead for his curly red hair that made him stand out amongst the brunettes on his team, Hardhitter who was probably the best home-runner on the team, Speedy who could round the diamond in one go cause she was so tiny (kinda like him!), Dizzy who didn't do much on the field cause he kinda spaced out a lot but was a good cheerleader for the rest of the team when he was in the dugout, Lefty cause she was lefthanded, Blonde cause she was one of the few blondes, Sneezy cause he was usually sneezing from seasonal allergies, Clumzy cause he usually went home with injuries (but he was still cool so he earned a Z in his name), Knockout cause she had a bad habit of knocking people out with her pitches or hits... </p><p>He still needed nicknames for the others. But they were all always a great team and worked super well together. It was rare to watch them lose. It was so much fun to watch them all work together and earn the praise of their parents and the town. Hardhitter and Speedy would always high-five their teammates as they ran by to home, receiving cheers, hollers, pats on the back and shoulders on the way, into the awaiting arms of their team mates, their captain, their parents...</p><p>Their parents... Their siblings, their... friends, their family...</p><p>That was okay. He didn't need it that badly.</p><p>Those high-fives looked nice, though.</p><hr/><p>Time was a construct that operated a little weird to him. Sometimes it moved too fast, sometimes it didn't move at all.</p><p>On that particular day, it was as though time was on fast-forward, though; before he knew it, the game had been won. The stands had erupted in cheers and applause, the Green Hills Meadowlarks were declared the winners, parents gathered up their children and hurried to their cars for their celebration parties, and all grew quiet. </p><p>Lunch Lady and the baseball field staff stayed for a while, but the staff never really talked to her or bothered her while she hung out cooking the remainder of her food, listening to music or just chilled in the field. They knew her well enough not to bother her. Several times, Sonic thought maybe... she might be safe enough to approach, but...</p><p>Soon enough, he saw a truck approaching Lunch Lady's spot. A man came out and started packing up the grill, packing up all the food. The truck drove away, and Lunch Lady started to go over to where her horse was stationed by the woods. Lunch Lady didn't drive like everyone else did; she went everywhere on her horse buddy. But Sonic knew that when Lunch Lady went for her horse, she was getting ready to leave.</p><p>Attaching Alert to her horse, she pulled herself onto her horse and looked around into the woods, possibly for Sonic. Sonic expected her to leave.</p><p>She didn't... not at first, anyway. She seemed tired today, bags under her eyes, which she rubbed a bit with the heel of her palm as she looked around. A thoughtful look on her face, she tugged on those ropes she had around the horse's neck and in its mouth, and the horse crept close to the woods. Her warm brown eyes scanning the trees, she smiled and calmly skimmed through the woods.</p><p>"Ya know, little wood gremlin," she muttered, just barely loud enough for him to hear; man, she even sounded tired. "If you're the same thing as the Blue Devil Carl's always talking about, you've gotten be wicked fast. You'd probably be good at baseball. I know you're still kinda shy right now, so you don't have to, ya know... come out and try anything with us if you don't want to, but... maybe think about playing around with the ball and bat yourself sometime. See if you like it. You never know."</p><p>Then, with nothing more than a passive little shrug and that same warm smile she always tossed out into the wind, she tugged on the horse's mouth-ropes to turn her away, and trotted off.</p><p>Sonic's feet rooted themselves in his spot when she said that to him. He'd always fantasized about it, but the thought of actually trying it had never really occurred to him. It had never presented itself as an option before. He always knew that maybe he could, but now it almost felt like someone was finally giving him permission to try. He wasn't sure if that was the best way to describe what he was feeling at the moment...</p><p>But Lunch Lady had a point. He didn't see any reason not to give it a shot. What else was he gonna do? Root through people's garbage?</p><p>Faster than he could have expected, afternoon turned to evening, and evening turned to night. Before long, even Lunch Lady went home, and so did the baseball field staff. The lights were turned on, but everyone else went home. The field was abandoned, and Sonic was left to his own devices. He usually went home, back to his cave.</p><p>But not tonight. Tonight, he felt compelled to try something different. Instead of going home, Sonic cautiously crept out onto the field, into the middle of the diamond. He'd run over it many times in the past, but he'd never been out on it before. It was so nice to feel the clean, freshly watered grass crunching under his feet, the big bright spotlights shining down on him like he was the star of the whole show. A big smile flashed across his muzzle, his big green eyes flashing with childlike wonder.</p><p>"This is so cool..." A small murmur left him as his eyes skimmed the diamond before landing on the abandoned bats, balls, helmets and mitts left behind after the game was over.</p><p>Hey. Lunch Lady suggested playing around with the bat and ball, and all the equipment was still left around. Maybe, if he was fast enough... maybe he didn't need a full team to play?</p><hr/><p>"Bottom of the ninth, tied score, and exactly who you wanted to play with the game on the line, Sonic!"</p><p>"But staring him down from the pitcher's mound is the most fearsome southpaw in Green Hills, also Sonic!"</p><p>"Okay, focus, Sonic. If you win this, you'll be the most beloved kid in Green Hills..."</p><p>"Hit it to the guy in left! He's a real space case!"</p><p>"Ugh... I can't with that guy..." </p><p>It was all him and simultaneously not him at the same time. At first, he was completely aware that it was all just a game. Just a silly made-up game he was playing out in his head. It didn't mean anything. He was just playing out the different roles in a baseball game. It was even better cause he didn't have to pick any of them; he got to play all the parts!</p><p>But of course, his main role was the star; the big baseball hero who won the big game and was adored by all. It was just a story, of course. He knew that.</p><p>He briefly played the role of the umpire coaching the pitcher, raced to the pitcher's mound, threw the ball, raced back to home, swung the bat as hard as he could, and had timed it just right for a dramatic swing into left field. </p><p><em>Dizzy </em>in left realized the ball was coming to him and raced to try to get it.</p><p>"I got it, I got it, I got it!" He cried out, flopping onto his stomach to try to catch it, only for the ball to fall just out of reach. "I don't got it..."</p><p>Sonic tossed the bat, and raced around first based past <em>Blonde</em>; not at his usual speed, just fast enough for a dramatic effect. Then past <em>Oucher </em>at second. <em>Speedy </em>was able to race out of right field to grab the ball and try to throw it back to the <em>umpire</em> back at home plate. As Sonic approached third plate, <em>Knockout </em>feverishly waved for Sonic to run past instead of stopping at third.</p><p>"Go home, go home!"</p><p>And Sonic did indeed continue running, knowing full well that the entire game was running on his making it to home. The ball was inches away from making it back to home, but just as the <em>umpire </em>was about to catch the ball and throw it down onto the home plate, Sonic dove into the dirt, sliding to a stop.</p><p>"Safe!"</p><p>His heart pounding, his chest swelling with pride, his eyes beaming and his quills standing up on end, Sonic pushed himself up to his feet. He didn't even bother wiping the dirt off of his pristine white gloves. He couldn't even hear the crowds above the sounds of his own cheering, his hoops and hollers, and his arms pumped with excitement.</p><p>"YES! Yes, yes, yes, yes! I did it! Did you see that?! I did it!"</p><p>He swiveled on his heel, raising his hand towards the diamond to let someone race forward to give him a high-five, only to remember very quickly that he was opening his hand to an empty, still and silent stadium.</p><p>Only the chirping of the crickets answered back. </p><p>Sonic's shoulders fell, his arm handed in the air as his ears dipped down and his bright smile slowly faded. The light in his eyes started to dim as they scanned the dugout and the stands. No one was there. Not the parents from before, not the baseball staff.</p><p>Not Donut Lord or Pretzel Lady. Not Crazy Carl or Lunch Lady or Longclaw...</p><p>No one.</p><p>No one was there.</p><p>No one but him.</p><p>Just him.</p><p>His arm finally succumb to gravity, his eyes beginning to burn as the truth he had been trying to avoid and deny for so long seemed to finally dawn on him.</p><p>"I really am alone... all alone... forever."</p><p>Saying it out-loud felt so final, and he couldn't stand it. A lifetime of loneliness, isolation, never talking to anyone but the imaginary people he made up in his head... He couldn't take it anymore. He just couldn't. He knew he made a promise to Longclaw to stay safe, stay hidden, but...</p><p>His heart pounded, his lungs began to feel tight and restrictive, robbing him of oxygen, a ringing started to chime without mercy in his ears. He couldn't take it anymore. He had all this freedom, he was only ever told to keep running, and he still felt trapped. His eyes stung and a lump formed in his throat.</p><p>His body, not knowing what else to do in the heat of the moment, just compelled him to toss the helmet off of his head, and then start running. But without a destination, it just compelled him to start from home, go to first, then second, then third, then back to home.</p><p>Then back to first, then second, then third, then home.</p><p>First, second, third, home.</p><p>First, second, third, home.</p><p>First, second, third, home.</p><p>He'd gone fast before, but never this fast. His speed only continued to accelerate, a bright blue electricity starting to crackle and sizzle around his body. Hot tears burned in his eyes, blinding his vision ever so slightly as he just kept turning left, his bright green eyes now slowly fading into a bright blue color. He kept moving, the world fading around him even more than it usually did, almost like he was in some sort of hyper-speed.</p><p>The faster he ran, the harder his feet pounded into the dirt. The plates were pressed mercilessly into the dirt, his speed digging ditches into the field in mere seconds, then in the moments between seconds, then even faster than that. None of it seemed to exist for a fraction of a second, only the word 'alone'. Flashing and echoing in his brain over and over again.</p><p>He was losing it; he was legitimately losing his mind as everything around him melted away in a mental haze. He wasn't sure how much more of this he was going to be able to take; years of constant watching hundreds of people having everything he wanted more than anything, and he couldn't have. He loved his life, but at the same time, he hated it with a burning passion.</p><p>He couldn't stand being this alone anymore.</p><p>He couldn't take it.</p><p>He wanted Longclaw.</p><p>Or Lunch Lady.</p><p>Or Donut Lord. </p><p><em>Someone</em>.</p><p><strong><em>ANYONE</em></strong>.</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>He just didn't want to be <span class="u">alone</span> anymore!!</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>And with that small mental burst of energy, something in his body that had been building up inside of him - perhaps just then or perhaps for a very long time - finally exploded outwards. Sonic let out a loud, startled cry, and all of the built up energy was released in all directions. The lights that once shone down on him burst into sparks and the diamond fell dark.</p><p>Miles around him, the entire town of Green Hills fell dark as he slowly realized what had just happened. The blue in his eyes and the electricity flashing away light a bolt of lightning now that it had been released, Sonic was able to dig his heels into the dirt and finally slow to a stop. His eyes now wide and all his fur and quills standing up on end, he looked around with horror in his eyes.</p><p>The entire town was dark.</p><p>"I'm sure no one noticed that giant blue explosion, right?"</p><p>Back to the cave, back to the cave, backtothecavebacktothecavebACKTOTHECAVE.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Sleepy Montana Town Has Woken Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It wasn't the sudden lack of the AC humming or the lights flickering off that clued Kit in that something was wrong. It was when she was suddenly interrupted from her going-to-bed routine by every single solitary animal on her entire farm going absolutely certifiably insane. With their combined vocal might, she could even hear them through her earbuds.</p><p>Sure, suddenly being surrounded by the pitch black of night was frightening, but when both dogs started barking at nothing, Bella started screeching and running around the room, and all the farm animals outside started going nuts, Kit had to cover her ears through her hair and earbuds. Only Coal seemed to be calm, as he was immediately racing to Kit's side, alerting her of an oncoming panic attack by bumping her leg with his head.</p><p>"Bella, hush! Jasper, be quiet! It's okay," she tried to console her barking dog and hissing cat to little avail as she found her phone again and turned the flashlight app on.</p><p>She tested the light switch in her bathroom and, as expected, nothing happened. She picked Bella up and quickly crossed the hall to her bedroom, tossing Bella onto the bed, whistling for Jasper.</p><p>"Jasper."</p><p>Though he continued fussing and barking Jasper followed her in. Once Jasper was in, Kit closed the door and scanned the floor for a pair of pants. The first thing she had to do was call Tom or Wade and see if this was a town wide thing; if it was, it meant her barn was gonna be out too, her supply of goat and cow milk was in jeopardy and she was gonna have to get her emergency generator on asap.</p><p>Locating a pair of pants, she quickly dialed Tom's personal number, turned it on speaker, pulled her earbuds out of the phone and her ears, threw the phone and her earbuds onto the bed and started putting her pants on.</p><p>"<em>Yellow</em>?"</p><p>"Hey, Tom, it's Kit."</p><p>"<em>I assumed.</em>"</p><p>"Hah, yeah, so, uh. My power's out."</p><p>"<em>You too?</em>"</p><p>"Shit," Kit grunted as she got her pants back on, picking her phone back up and snapping for Coal to follow her to the door. "I thought it was just me. Is the whole town dark?"</p><p>"<em>Seems like it,</em>" Tom reported as Kit closed the door behind her to keep Jasper and Bella safely inside and dashed down the hall to her bathroom; she had to find a hair tie. "<em>Wade's got calls coming in from pretty much everyone.</em>"</p><p>"O-Okay, okay... So, I'm gonna get my generator up so my milk doesn't go sour, that thing's on a time limit right now." Kit grabbed a hair tie and rushed to the stairs. "And I'm gonna get my house's generator up if anyone needs to charge their phone's or anything, so if ya'll need to hook anything up to anything, just, uh... have Zim come out here whenever."</p><p>"<em>Yeah, I'll get Wade on that, no worries.</em>"</p><p>With Tom in the middle of his sentence, Kit put her phone between her teeth just long enough to tie her hair back with her hair tie as she hurried downstairs. Taking her phone out of her mouth, she started hurrying for the door when something caught her attention that made her dash slow to a stop. While everything else in her kitchen was pitch dark, through one drawer there shone the faint outline of the cracks, of something glowing within. Her brow furrowed at it, and her head tilted slightly.</p><p>"<em>Hey, are those your cows freaking out in the background?</em>" Tom asked as she stopped. "<em>Zimmerman's cows are going nuts too, I think, and Ozzy's been up the wall. Think a storm's coming...</em>"</p><p>Eyes narrowing a bit, Kit inched her way over to the drawer and cautiously pulled it open. She set her phone down on the countertop as she folded open the cloth she'd used to store away the quill she'd picked up in the woods the other day. While it had been completely lifeless and inert when she had initially picked it up, now, it brimmed with life, crackling and sizzling with a bright white light that was barely tinted blue. She could barely hear an electrical current surging through it. It was glowing so brightly that she had to pull her glasses up onto the top of her head to be able to look at it comfortably.</p><p>"<em>Kit? You still there?</em>"</p><p>"Y-Yeah, I'm, uh..." Kit shook her head. "Yeah, I gotta go turn on my generators before the milk goes. L-Lemme call you back..."</p><p>She hung up straight away, and with her hand still outstretched, her fingertips grazed over the smooth texture of the quill. It wasn't hot, just a little... unpleasantly warm. It tingled against her skin; softly, harmlessly. It wasn't warm, but it wasn't cold either. It was... a difficult sensation for her to describe. It was almost like the tingling she felt when she was having an anxiety attack.</p><p>But why...?</p><hr/><p>Sonic paced around his cave almost at a lightning fast pace, running his fingers through his quills with his nerves running high. He couldn't sit still, he couldn't think straight. How could he be so reckless, how could he be so stupid?! He had one job! <em>One</em> job, and that was to literally lay low and do nothing! And he couldn't even do that!</p><p>"Okay. Okay, okay, okayokayokay, this is fine, you're fine. You're okay," he consoled himself, his heart pounding way harder than it usually did. "They just lost their power, they'll get the lights back on and they'll just go on like nothing happened. It's fine, it's okay, it's all--it's all gonna be good, you're not in danger."</p><p>He kept saying it to himself, but his brain and his heart weren't believing it. His brain was still panicking. His fingers gripped his head, his unfocused eyes glazing across the bag hanging from a pulled out root on the wall. He dashed over to it, finally taking a moment to pause. </p><p>Longclaw's rings. Her multiverse map...</p><p>His fingers left his head and found their way to the worn, dusty leather of the bag, tracing the edges of the tape with the words "<strong><em>For Emergency Use Only!!!</em></strong>" written on it in big black sharpie for a moment. His touch caused the golden rings inside to faintly jingle against one another, reminding him of their presence.</p><p>His heart sank. He did it again. He did it to Longclaw and South Island, and now he did it to Green Hills. Even if nothing came of it... he still did it. He could just see her looking down on him, with a deep frown of disappointment. He'd done his best to stay hidden, and all it took for ten years to go down the drain was one heated moment in the middle of a baseball field. In the end, it was all for nothing.</p><p>Sonic slid the rings off of the root and slowly walked over to his bean bag, collapsing onto it and pulling his knees to his chest to curl up into a small ball. Holding the bag close to him and swallowing the lump in his throat, he tried his best to put it out of his mind.</p><p>"It's okay. It'll be okay. If anything happens, and all else fails, you can just use the ring to go to a safer planet," he comforted himself again, trying his best to crack a half-hearted smile to no one. "You can at least keep <em>that</em> part of your promise, Sonic. You did your best. You'll be okay..."</p><p>The bag sunk deep into the fur of his chest as both hands clasped around it and he brought it close to his heart. He really wished, more than anything, he had someone there to tell him what to do. Anyone to tell him to do anything, even if it was something dumb. Something more than one promise he made when he was three ten years ago. He needed more guidance than that... </p><p>But it was all he had.</p><p>A promise, a bag of rings, an overactive self-preservation instinct...</p><p>...and a really, really, <strong><em>really </em></strong>strong hatred of mushrooms.</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>August 17th, 2020</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Unknown Phenomena Site</strong>
</p><p>The baseball stadium had been completely quarantined by the military the following morning after the report of the power outage. It wasn't just in the sleepy little town of Green Hills; it was all along the Pacific Northwest. Civilians had to make way the entire day for tanks and trucks from the National Guard, so that scientists and technicians alike could be let through to study the site where the energy blast had been emitted. People would occasionally slow down on their walks or drives to see what was going on, but the occasional soldier guarding the perimeter would insist they move along and pay no mind to their activities. </p><p>No one was still quite sure what it was; not even their best scientists could pinpoint the exact chemical makeup of what was filling the air by the following afternoon. EMP blasts and other such possible attacks had all been completely ruled out. Thus far, everyone had ruled out radiation or anything immediately endangering the people, so an evacuation didn't seem necessary, but they still needed to pinpoint the source. But no one could have anticipated the sort of specialist that the Defense Department had authorized to be sent down to the impact site.</p><p>The sight of the army trucks was nothing surprising, but the massive, sleek, almost futuristic, jet black truck passive its way through town caught everyone's attention, as did the other dark black vans following after it. Even as it passed through into the baseball stadium, it started to turn the heads of the soldiers; even that of the officer in charge of the operation (for the moment), Major Bennington. The ground practically vibrated and trembled as it rolled across the grass and hummed to a halt.</p><p>Once the truck stopped, a series of steps extended from the side of the truck and onto the grass, opening the truck up for the sole occupant and "driver" to step out; "driver" in quotations due to its automatic nature. </p><p>And from within the vehicle whose interior seemed to be from another time or dimension, a thin man with a very clean hairstyle, a curly mustache, a sleek black trench coat and thin black spectacles stepped out and down the stairs, a smug, intrigued, arrogant smirk stretched across his face.</p><p>He sauntered down the steps as one other dark skinned, well dressed man stepped out of one of the other black vans following behind the much more impressive truck. He joined the taller man immediately, while the other men and women dressed in black who stepped out of their own vans followed a few feet away.</p><p>Major Bennington sized the two men up as they confidently approached him, and just about everyone who saw Dr. Ivo Robotnik and Agent Stone knew exactly what kind of people they were dealing with: a certifiable lunatic and the only person in the entire government who knew how to translate for him.</p><p>Robotnik came within mere inches of Major Bennington, not even bothering to size him up like Bennington had done just a moment ago, taking off his glasses after a moment.</p><p>"Are you in charge here?"</p><p>"Yes, I a--"</p><p>"Nope," he cut off the Major rather rudely without a single care for the Major's sharp glare. "Wrong. I'm in charge. Me. <em>I'm</em> in charge."</p><p>The Major's lips tightened for a moment, but he didn't say anything in response. From the interior of Agent Stone's coat, the agent pulled out a sleek rectangular device that shone a holographic red emblem of a division of the Defense Department. Robotnik gestured towards it rather smugly.</p><p>"You've never seen anything like this before. It says I'm the top banana, in a world of hungry little monkeys. Allow me to clarify:" Turning with a somewhat robotic hum hissing through his teeth, he turned his eyes away from Bennington. "'In a sequentially ranked hierarchy based on level of critical importance, the disparity between us is too vast to quantify.' Agent Stone."</p><p>"The doctor thinks you're basic," Agent Stone explained rather plainly to an increasingly bristling Major Bennington as Robotnik turned away and walked further towards the impact site of the energy blast.</p><p>"I'm initiating a sweep sequence," Robotnik announced somewhat more seriously, looking to his hand as he pressed a series of buttons on his glove; as he did so, several segments on the top of his truck opened to allow a series of bright white egg-shaped drones to rise out and begin charging as they hovered in place. "Ten miles in every direction should suffice. Is he still looking at me funny?"</p><p>"Yes, he is," Agent Stone confirmed bluntly.</p><p>"Tell him to stop, or I'll pull up his search history."</p><p>"If you don't stop looking at the doctor, he'll take a closer look at--"</p><p>"<em>I'm not deaf,</em>" Bennington grunted.</p><p>"And tell him that his men will report to me now blahblahblah, blahblahblah, blahblahblah, you know the usual--"</p><p>"Excuse me?! Listen, pal," Bennington interrupted, and Agent Stone could see Robotnik visibly bristle when he did. "I don't know if you realize who--"</p><p>"I'm sorry, Major What was Your Name?" Robotnik asked dryly as he turned around with a raised brow.</p><p>"Benn--"</p><p>"Nobody cares!" Robotnik shook his head and started sauntering back, furrowing his brow. "Nobody cares. Listen, Major Nobody Cares, do you know why nobody cares who you are? Because nobody cares about your feeble accomplishments."</p><p>Agent Stone stepped away to allow Robotnik to step uncomfortably close to Bennington. Bennington wasn't phased or intimidated in the slightest, only pissed off as Robotnik loomed close to him and glowered at him.</p><p>"And nobody cares how proud your mommy is that you're now reading at a third grade level. Have you finished Charlotte's Web yet? Spoiler alert: She dies in the end, but she leaves a big creepy egg sack."</p><p>The sound of a thunk and a loud whirring announced the rising of the dozens of Robotnik's egg-shaped drones as they hovered over the baseball field. He looked up to them suddenly with the alertness of a mother deer and the pride of a lioness.</p><p>"Ah! My babies," he practically hummed, racing towards them for a moment before whirling around and opening up his arms in a grandiose fashion, his grin smug and self-assured as always.</p><p>"Hah! Oo, look what came out of <em>my </em>eggsack! You know what I love about machines?" He asked as he whirled around and stretched a hand out to them in almost a disturbed loving way. "They do what they're told. They follow their programming!"</p><p>His tone turning increasingly sour and spiteful, he turned his head to look over his shoulder to an equally bitter Bennington.</p><p>"They don't need time off to get drunk or visit their families for the holidays. And you, do what you're told: Stand over there on the edge of your personal abyss and watch my machines do your job."</p><p>With a slow inhale through his nose to steady his patience, Bennington could only take a few steps away to join his men off to the side. Agent Stone turned to face his superior with a somewhat pleased expression. Robotnik turned towards his drones again, pressing a series of buttons on his gloves yet again with a delighted yet somewhat crazed look in his eye.</p><p>"Can you feel it, Stone?!"</p><p>"I can feel it, Doctor." Stone couldn't, really; he was just happy to watch the good Doctor work.</p><p>"It's evolution, Stone..." Robotnik insisted with the utmost confidence, his tightened fists practically shaking as his drones floated off into the woods to carry out their master's orders. "It's <strong><em>evolution!!</em></strong>"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Hunt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No.</p><p>No, no, no, nonononononono.</p><p>Oh, god, they were <em>everywhere</em>. </p><p>No matter where Sonic went, there was always a soldier. He recognized the uniform from so many movies, he knew how to spot a member of the military by now. He thought he would be okay if, at the very least, they stayed away from the woods, but before he could even do a full sweep of where they were traveling in the town, they were practically one mile away from his cave.</p><p>Stopping back in the woods, he knelt down behind a log, looking down over the activity. Dozens of white, egg-shaped drones with bright white lights scanning the wood floor, men with guns, dogs sniffing the leafs and rocks for his scent and barking in every which way.</p><p>"Okay, okay, everything is fine," he consoled himself again, knowing full well he was lying. "You played some baseball, got a <em>little </em>upset, lightning shot out your <strong><em>butt</em></strong>, and now they're coming for you..."</p><p>He pushed off of the log and sped back to his cave, not even bothering to put back Lunch Lady's camo-cloth or the wood-leaf door. Neither of them were going to help him anymore. </p><p>"Alright, alright, Earth isn't safe anymore, time for plan B: Mushroom-ville. Gotta take my stuff!" He raced around his cave to grab a small child's backpack he'd snagged out of the garbage, unzipping it quickly, looking around to find whatever would fit, and grabbing everything as he thought of them. "Okay, essential items only. Okay--toothbrush, toothpaste, hairgel, nightlight, cantine, fruit snacks, brownies, food, funny hat, this half-eaten cantalope, cd collection, cd player, crayons, coloring books--oh, and my scented candle, my entire comic book collection, bean bag chair--can a bean bag chair fit in a back pack? Nonono of course not, that's stupid."</p><p>With nothing else that could fit in the backpack, he zipped it shut and threw both straps over his shoulders. He ran a hand through his quills and looked around for anything else he could carry in just his hands, his eyes darting around in a blind panic.</p><p>"Okay, what else? The rings! The rings, yes, of course!" He raced over to grab the bag off the root, opening it up to take a ring out and jumping over onto the bean bag for one last sense of familiarity before the moment of truth came to pass. "Here we go, ring time. Mushroom planet, here I come!"</p><p>He pulled his arm back to throw it, but just as he was about to throw, a humming drone interrupted him, several shadows passing over him through the skylight above him. A sharp gasp ran through his throat as he looked up in alert terror. Following the humming, he could hear the aggressive barking of several search hounds. </p><p>They'd found his cave, or were about to.</p><p>"Oh, no! They're right outside! I-I gotta go somewhere else!"</p><p>He slid the ring back into the bag, pulled the string taut and jumped off the bean bag chair, hurrying to the entrance of the cave. His hand on the rock wall, he slid to a halt, turning to take one last look at the inside of the cave. He was leaving so much behind; there was so much he couldn't take with him. His bean bag chair, his boom box, his 175 mph Speed Limit sign, his hand-made ping-pong table... He'd spent so much time building this for himself and he had to throw it all away. </p><p>But it was for the best. His ears dipped down, and he forced himself to swallow the hard reality yet again. He was a mature teenager. He could do this.</p><p>"G'bye, cave..." He heaved one last sigh before racing out the main entrance.</p><p>He ducked down beside the entrance and waited for an opening to safely rush through. But he needed somewhere to go. He needed somewhere he wouldn't be easily spotted... Somewhere safe... Somewhere...</p><p>That's it! Donut Lord! He could hide out in his house for just a second, just long enough to use the ring. All he had to do was make it out of the woods without being seen, and he'd been home free! </p><p>He pressed off the rock and blasted off into the woods, his heart pounding in his ears for the first time in a long time. He remembered exactly where he needed to go to get to Donut Lord and Pretzel Lady's house, and for Sonic, it wasn't all that far away. He just had to cut through the woods to--</p><p>
  <em>SNP</em>
</p><p>"I got something!"</p><p>He tripped and stumbled into a small pile of leaves and moss at a sudden stab in his left leg, softening his fall with his arm. His heart almost stopping, he twisted around to see what had caught him, and he found a small feathered dart sticking out of his leg, very likely injecting something into him. Either that, or it already had.</p><p>"No... no, no, nonononono..." He muttered, using the heel of his worn shoe to kick it off of his leg before pushing himself back onto his feet and starting his dash over again.</p><p>Crap... Crap, no, no, he could already feel it. He was already starting to feel sluggish and dizzy. The trees were still blurry even as he was starting to slow down. The sounds of the men trying to catch up with him were still faint, but they were still following after him. They were going to be back on top of him any second. He had to think fast while he was still able to focus his thoughts.</p><p>His brain felt like pudding and his limbs immediately started to weigh him down. He wasn't going to make it. Not to Donut Lord's house. He needed to go somewhere else... somewhere closer, somewhere safer--anywhere! He just needed to get away!</p><p>The whinny of a horse off in the distance caused his ear to twitch and he skidded to a soft stop before turning to dash in that direction before he even had time to think over his new destination.</p><p>Lunch Lady's house. If he just got to Lunch Lady's farm and hid in her barn, he could use a ring there. </p><hr/><p>What a pain in the ass.</p><p>Getting the power back was easy enough, but now Kit had to keep all of her animals penned up in their coops and barns because the military was swarming. The only times she was okay keeping them cooped up was when it was raining; this was just nerve wracking. But if she didn't, her herd and flock would have a nervous meltdown again. The other animals were at least chill enough to just mind their own business and huddle together, or move to other parts of the farm, but the herd and flock were too nervous.</p><p>Ugh.</p><p>Laying helplessly on the blanket in the middle of her pasture, with Coal beside her, Jasper sprawled out sleepily, Bella laying on her chest and  Bonnie grazing peacefully nearby, she didn't even wanna listen to her music. She just let the sounds of nature and the active military play out around her. She had to listen out for when they finally left to be able to let the animals out again.</p><p>The sound of her phone going off cut off her mental cursing. She answered, put it on speaker and let it flop beside her head.</p><p>"You've reached the voicemail of Eternal Pain and Suffering. Please leave a message after the--" She ended it off with a long groan, bringing her hand up to pull the Magic Kingdom ballcap's brim over her eyes, thankful to have thought to bring it out with her for a change instead of just closing her eyes.</p><p>"<em>Still there, huh?</em>" Aubrey hummed sympathetically on the other end.</p><p>"It's only been a couple hours, but it already feels like <em>daaaaaays</em>," Kit moaned, running a hand up her face. "And I can't even listen to music cause I have to listen for them to ultimately find nothing and leave so I can let the animals out again. It sucks..."</p><p>"<em>Well, who's to say they won't find anything?</em>" Aubrey suggested. "<em>You and Carl have been 'seeing' something for a while now, haven't you?</em>"</p><p>"Oh, no, I'm not suggesting they won't find anything cause it's not there," Kit corrected, shaking her head and eyeing the woods in her peripheral. "They won't find anything cause the little thing's too fast. I don't want them going anywhere. They're part of my routine and the government taking them away would just throw off my whole schedule."</p><p>"<em>Aww, sweetie, you're worried about them!</em>"</p><p>"Mmf.... okay, yeah, kind of," Kit admitted with a shrug. "I've seen too many movies not to be. Whether it caused the blackout or not, it's probably still harmless. I don't see why everyone can't just leave the poor thing alone."</p><p>"<em>Well, there's talk in the journalism circle about a possible terrorist attack,</em>" Aubrey mumbled in thought, prompting Kit to roll her eyes. "<em>Or at least this being the prelude to one. Pentagon ruled out anything not-enemy related; meteor strikes, solar flares, power plant malfunctions... so ya know, they gotta look at this as a matter of national security, I'd imagine.</em>"</p><p>"Aubrey, please. That's always the excuse for the military to go in and do whatever they want," Kit argued back. "And they already said the energy surge was low to the ground, an EMP that terrorists or enemy attacks would use would be off the ground. Like, <em>miles </em>off the ground."</p><p>"<em>And... you know that off the top of your head... how?</em>"</p><p>"I was a writer before I switched to agriculture, remember? I could Google this shit with plausible deniability," Kit reminded her with a passive shrug. "And since my migraine meds kicked in, I can recall this shit off the top of my head now."</p><p>"<em>Oh! Hah, right. That stuff is like magic," </em>Aubrey giggled behind her hand.</p><p>"And you wanna tell me how you found out anything about what the Pentagon of all places is going?" Kit asked with a raised brow when Aubrey knowing things she probably shouldn't quickly jumped back out to her.</p><p>"<em>Some of it's public, some of it's through my own journalism connections,</em>" Aubrey explained, shrugging on her end. "<em>Aka my ex-boyfriend, heh. But having tech experience has its perks too. You can get into places you're not really supposed to."</em></p><p>"Aubrey, you know the FBI is probably listening to this," Kit warned her. "Why're you comfortable--"</p><p>"<em>Oh, Kit, I'm just kidding,</em>" Aubrey chuckled before her phone suddenly turned devious. <em>"Besides. My cell phone's specially encrypted. They can't get in for shit."</em></p><p>"Uh. Aubrey? You got something you wanna tell me?" Kit asked with a raised brow."</p><p>"<em>Having an ex who used for work for the FBI also has its perked,</em>" Aubrey teased affectionately. "<em>And that's all I'm gonna say about that.</em>"</p><p>"How many freakin' people have you slept with?" Kit laughed with equal affection in her voice.</p><p>"<em>Oh, I stopped keeping count after seven,</em>" Aubrey sighed fondly.</p><p>"You slut."</p><p>"<em>I am, aren't</em> <em>I?</em>" In on the joke in that Aubrey was just as much of a sexually inexperienced virgin as Kit was but was active on way more dating apps that Kit was, Aubrey laughed into her hand as Kit did.<em> "But it's had its perks! It's made me so many friends and business connections!</em>"</p><p>"Oh, I'm very sure."</p><p>Without warning, Bella's head suddenly lifted from Kit's chest. She kneaded her shirt for a moment anxiously, and Jasper looked up a moment later. Noticing this, Kit pushed herself to sit up, and almost as though this was some sort of trigger, Bella jumped off her chest and into the grass. Kit was able grab Bella's leash quickly enough to stop her from bolting and Jasper thankfully stayed where he was, but she could hear the faint sounds of dogs barking getting closer. Her legs twitched, and Coal scooted closer to press his paw down on her leg, urging the twitching to stop.</p><p>Bonnie glanced in the direction that the dogs and cat were looking, and began to softly dig at the grass and dirt underneath, her tail twitching nervously.</p><p>"Hey, uh, Aubrey? I gotta call you back," Kit called down to the phone with a tight voice, reaching with her free hand to pick up the phone, the discarded earbuds, and her glasses.</p><p>"<em>Why? Everything okay?</em>" Aubrey called, gentle concern ebbing into her voice.</p><p>"I-I don't know, the dogs and cat are freaking out, and there's... people in the woods, I-I gotta go," Kit insisted nervously as she slid her glasses back over her eyes.</p><p>"<em>Oh. O-Oh, okay, stay safe, honey, call me back once everything's okay! Love you!</em>"</p><p>"Y-Yeah, love you too." </p><p>Kit hung up and stuffed the phone and earbuds in her pocket, standing up to her feet. Though she wasn't right at the edge of the woods, she was close enough to at least see into it. She could faintly detect movement several yards in the distance, and that was the point where she decided she wasn't going to get caught in the middle of anything. Another part of the pasture it was.</p><p>"Nope. Not doing that. Time to go."</p><p>She quickly rushed over to Bonnie, grabbing Jasper and Bella's leashes to secure them to the front of the saddle. She turned back to the blanket and her bag to grab everything as Coal stood up and started following her. But just as she turned around to head back to Bonnie again, she watched - almost in slow motion - as Bella was able to squirm out of her harness and bolt off towards the woods. Her heart falling into her stomach in a panic, Kit dropped everything in her hands, and took off running.</p><p>"Bella, no!" She yelled after her, but Bella wouldn't come back. "Get back here!"</p><p>Either Bella was really fast or Kit was still just that out of shape, but either way, she couldn't catch up to Bella before the cat reached the woods. Once she was a little ways into the woods, Bella finally slowed to a stop, hunkering down as though she was about to pounce on something and staring at one spot in particular. Kit knelt down and immediately scooped Bella up. Her chest aching a bit from her panicked dash, she stayed low to the ground to catch her breath.</p><p>"God... Cat... I swear to God... I'm gonna... kill you... makin' me run... for noth..." She groaned, gasping for air for a moment before she looked down and realized Bella was staring in that very familiar way. "...ing..."</p><p>Bella stared when she was in the forest. She stared a lot. But she only stared when the gremlin was around. She would have expected an alert cat to be looking around at the sounds of the army rushing off in another direction to their right and forwards, but instead, to their left, Bella stared at a tree.</p><p>A log.</p><p>Then a batch of leaves.</p><p>The leaves rustled, and for the first time in five years since Bella started staring at those very particular spots, something finally stepped out from behind the tree.</p><p>A dirty, white gloved fist supported a tiny, blue and peach furred body as it slowly tried to make its way out of the wood. A bright orange backpack on its back with a brown satchel in one hand, a small golden ring shining out of the weakening, unfurling opposite fist. Bright green eyes were hazy and out of focus as they looked up from the woodland floor, meeting the stunned, dark brown gaze of the Lunch Lady.</p><p>Kit's shoulders rose, her eyes growing wide as the small creature slowly stumbled forward. Strangely, she noticed a sense of security and familiarity in the boy's expression, as dazed and sleepy as it was. She wrapped a protective arm around Bella as the cat purred against her chest. She couldn't say she felt scared or protective, just startled and uncertain; frozen in place.</p><p>"...Lun..." The creature tried to speak, his eyes glazing over her hat. "...M...ag... Kin..."</p><p>The ring fell out of his loosened grip and onto the dusty ground. Kit expected that to just be it, but instead, when the ring fell flat, it expanded. Kit lurched away as the image of Cinderella's Palace appeared from within the inside of the hole; not from the ground level, though, but from above it. Her mouth went dry; this was too much to process at once. She thought, for a moment, this might just be a projection or... </p><p>A small Mickey Mouse shaped balloon floated up from inside the ring, and Kit's wide eyes followed it up into the air until it snagged on a nearby branch. Her breath stolen from her, she quickly looked back down to the hole down beneath her, realizing pretty quickly that it wasn't just a projection of the Magic Kingdom.</p><p>It was the actual place.</p><p>As this happened, the small creature slowly swayed before falling forward onto the ground, his small brown bag flying from his hands and into the hole. He was only barely able to realize what happened as the ring began to shrink and dissipate into golden dust. But with no energy left as the tranquilizer fluid robbed him of consciousnesses, he just pawed at the ground in front of him in defiance before resting his head on the leaves and conked out entirely.</p><p>Leaving Kit flat on her butt, cat still in her arms, eyes wide, mouth dry.</p><p>Glancing at a Mickey Mouse balloon stuck in a tree.</p><p>In Montana. </p><p>...</p><p>The sounds of barking brought her back to the present. She blinked and shook her head, looking back down to the little blue creature now laying helplessly in front of her. It hit her almost instantly.</p><p>Her gremlin! Her wood gremlin! This was it! This was them!</p><p>She put Bella down on the ground and crawled forward, picking the little guy up and rolling him over onto his back, sinking her fingers under the fur of his neck to check for a pulse. It was... woah. Well, pace didn't matter, his heart was beating and that was all that mattered. Her fingers traced along his arms, hips, then legs--</p><p>The impact sight of a tranquilizer dart. Okay, that's all it was. He was fine, just asleep. More barking, whirring, walking and shouting in the other direction, and it was getting louder.</p><p>Oh, hell no. She'd seen enough movies to know where this was going, and she certainly was not going to stick around for that, that was for damn sure. </p><p>Supporting the creature with her shoulder and her arm under his rump, she hooked her other arm under Bella's stomach and proceeded to haul both of her tiny furry friends out of the woods. Even if she had to wrap him up in the blanket and slump him over Bonnie's back to get him back to the house undetected, Kit was going to get some answers without anyone getting hurt.</p><p>Her dogs joined her in an instant and Bonnie was already at her side before she had even fully gotten back to the blanket; they seemed to know already.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Our Second Hello</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>February 14th, 2010</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>???</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>"Listen carefully, Sonic. You have a power unlike anything I've ever seen, and that means someone will always want it. The only way to stay safe is to stay hidden. </em>
  <em>This world is on the far side of the universe. You should be safe there."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I don't care if they come through after us! I'll make them go away! I don't wanna go without you!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm sorry, Sonic, but you must. This is the only way now. These rings will be your most important possession. If you're ever discovered, use one. Never stop running. Now go!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"<strong>Longclaw</strong>!!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Goodbye Sonic."</em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>August 17th, 2020</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Angel Isle Farms</strong>
</p><p>When Sonic felt his senses return to him, he half expected to be in some kind of cage, or holding cell, or restraints. Not on... a sofa. Under a warm blanket. It felt like... oh what was it... wool? Cotton...?</p><p>The sunlight made him squint for a moment before he opened his eyes again, and there was a very light weight pressing down on his chest. Apparently his hand had wrapped around the source in his sleep. Blinking awake, his eyes forcing themselves open, he found himself face to face with Radar's blue-green eyes, staring right at him as she kneaded at the blanket over his soft chest.</p><p>His eyes shot open. Definitely awake now.</p><p>He sat up quick, causing the cat to jump off of him and onto the rug beside the sofa. Rubbing his eyes as they were blinded by the sudden sunlight, he looked around at his new surroundings. The warm fireplace, the cozy, floral decore, Snoozer resting by the sliding glass door (which now had the curtains drawn over them...) </p><p>Sonic was in Lunch Lady's house. </p><p>Looking around, he found all the windows were closed, their curtains drawn with no way for anyone outside to look in. And there, sitting at the other end of the sofa, typing away at her laptop with Alert at her feet until he had sat up, was Lunch Lady herself.</p><p>Staring back at him and his dazed expression with a surprised, examining look of her own.</p><p>"Lunch Lady...?"</p><p>Kit's brow rose when Sonic spoke again, but by that point, she'd had at least an hour and a half to process all of this. Taking a slow breath in, she slowly closed her laptop, set it aside on the coffee table in front of her, and cautiously stood up.</p><p>"Hi." Her greeting was softspoken and gentle, so as not to potentially startle him; she noticed that his ears pinned back against the slope of his head when she talked to him. "Can you sit up straight?"</p><p>Still somewhat delirious, all Sonic could think to do was nod, using the arm of the sofa behind him to push himself up. As Sonic sat up and lazily moved the blanket off of his still somewhat numb legs, Kit picked a glass up off of the coffee table, handing it to him. It was only when she did so that Sonic even realized how dry his mouth was.</p><p>"Here," she insisted, her tone intentionally even as she was still trying her best to stay calm. "Drink."</p><p>Sonic cautiously accepted the glass, sniffing its contents before downing the entire cup of water straight away. Kit's brow crushed sympathetically as she sat back down on her side of the sofa, folding her hands slightly.</p><p>"Oh, geez, you <em>were </em>thirsty..." She sighed quietly as he gasped for air when he was done. </p><p>She reached over to take the glass back from him, and in Sonic's still quasi-delirious state, he let her, and wiped his wet muzzle with his arm as he shook his swimming head. After setting the glass back down on the coffee table, Kit ran a nervous hand through her hair and watched Sonic carefully look her up and down with a concerned look.</p><p>"How are you feelin'?" Kit hazarded a guess.</p><p>"Like pudding," Sonic slurred somewhat, rubbing a hand down his face, his mind trying to recall what led him to this point.</p><p>"Yeah, after being tranq'ed, I'd imagine," Kit sighed again with another nod. "Where were you trying to go, hun?"</p><p>"I-I was... trying to get to Donut Lord's house--"</p><p>"Donut Lord?" Kit asked rather bluntly with a raised brow, only for her question to get lost in Sonic's hazed explanation.</p><p>"--but then they shot me--i-in-in-in-in the leg."</p><p>"Yes, in the leg, I found the spot," Kit noted with a patient nod, leaning slightly to try to make eyecontact; his eyes weren't focused still.</p><p>"So, I-I needed somewhere safe," Sonic continued, trying his absolute best to focus his gaze up to her. "And you were the closest person living next to my cave, Lunch Lady."</p><p>"O-Okay, the Lunch Lady thing," Kit suddenly interjected with a raised hand and a small smile. "That's precious and everything, but I gotta know: Why... do you keep calling me that?"</p><p>"Because you make food appear with your magic backpack," Sonic explained rather plainly with a raised brow, like it was the most obvious explanation in the world.</p><p>Kit blinked when he said this. She blinked, and then she laughed softly, nodding understandingly. She wasn't even going to argue this. The way he said it reminded her so much of how she answered adults' questions with her own unique answers with the most blunt tone imaginable. Plus the explanation itself was... strangely endearing. From his perspective, she could see how it would look like that.</p><p>"Okay. Understandable," she chuckled warmly, only for her smile to fall when Sonic's eyes darted around the room a second time.</p><p>"W-Wait, wait, why am I still on Earth?"</p><p>"Huh?"</p><p>A series of emotions flashed across his face; confusion, fear, panic. He seemed to be fully waking up, understanding his situation and recalling everything that had happened before he was knocked out. He looked over to her with wide eyes full of panic.</p><p>"Oh, no! I lost my rings!" Sonic cried out as he tried to stand very suddenly.</p><p>"O-Ok, easy, it's okay," Kit assured him as she brought her hands up to try to settle his terror, watching him stumble forward towards her. "Ee-easy!"</p><p>Thankfully, she caught him just in time and his hands gripped her jacket. He pushed away from her just enough to look down to her with that same fear in his eyes as Kit supported him with her hands.</p><p>"Okay, alright, one thing at a time, deep breath," Kit instructed him firmly, and he tried to steady his breathing as he woke up more fully. "Are you talking about the brown bag?"</p><p>"Yes! Yes, the brown bag with my rings, they fell through a ring, and I don't know where they went--""</p><p>"Okay, <em>honey</em>."</p><p>Kit grabbed a hold of his shoulders and looked at him sternly now, her tone rising a bit just to get his attention; he looked down to her with more attention now, and her touch brought him down a bit. Eye-contact was hard for Kit, borderline painful, even. But for the sake of helping Sonic calm down, she did her best to force it. Her grip was firm, but gentle.</p><p>"I'm gonna need you to slow down. For just a minute. We're not gonna figure anything out if you panic. I don't have... any idea of what you're talking about, but I wanna help you, so I really need you to just... slow down for me for a bit, okay?" </p><p>"Really?" Kit felt the muscles in his arms relax and the fear in his eyes flash away to be replaced with something akin to hope when she said this. "You're gonna help me?"</p><p>"Obviously," Kit assured him with another smile, moving him to set him back down on the sofa. "You're the same guy I've been feeding for the last five years, aren't you? I've known you all this time; only difference is now I... have a face. So. Let's start with one thing at a time, okay?"</p><p>"Okay, got it, great plan," Sonic agreed with a smile and a nod. "First thing: Where's the bathroom?" </p><p>Oh, boy.</p><hr/><p>"So you're not a gremlin."</p><p>After a trip to the bathroom, Kit got Sonic to her dining room table - with a few phone books to help him reach the height of the table - and was quick to throw some hot dogs into the microwave for the both of them to nibble on while they talked. For some reason, Bella followed Sonic just about everywhere he went, no matter where it was. She even meowed and cried the entire time he was in the bathroom.</p><p>"No, you know, I never really understood that nickname? I don't even know what that is," Sonic admitted with a wince as he leaned on his head lazily. </p><p>"Well, you know, you just lived in the woods, I never saw you, Carl already reserved Blue Devil," Kit argued with a shrug as she pulled the hot dogs out of the microwave. "It was just what came to mind. But you're <em>actually </em>a hedgehog from another dimension.</p><p>"Right."</p><p>"Okay, following so far..." Kit hummed as she dressed Sonic's dogs, leaving hers plain. Somehow, this was less difficult to process than she anticipated it would have been. "And, what's your name?"</p><p>"Sonic."</p><p>Kit turned to him with both their plates and looked him over as she walked over to him. The look on his face when he said his name was... strange. She couldn't properly attach an emotion to it. 'Happy' and 'proud' were the closest equivalents she could think of. With another small smile, she set the plate down in front of him and sat down at the seat closest to him. </p><p>"Suits you," Kit agreed, nodding softly as Sonic very quickly devoured his hot dogs; he seemed to beam with pride when she said that. "And as cute as the Lunch Lady nickname is, it's not actually my name. It's Kit."</p><p>He wiped his muzzle with his arm and nodded in acknowledgement of her name, but nothing more. Kit took a bite of her hotdog, quickly swallowed, and wiped her mouth before folding her hands.</p><p>"So... You had these rings, right?" Sonic nodded. "And what do they do?"</p><p>"Rings are how all advanced cultures travel between worlds," Sonic explained slowly with a furrowed brow. "And now <em>mine </em>are on top of a big castle I've only ever seen on your hat. So I need to go to the Magic Kingdom so I can get back my rings and use them to go to the Mushroom planet."</p><p>"Okay, Sonic, honey, moving too fast again," Kit reminded him, reaching over to pat his hand again but withdrawing when Sonic huffed impatiently.</p><p>"I'm not too fast, you're just too slow," Sonic mumbled quietly, causing Kit to laugh softly.</p><p>"I don't doubt it," Kit chuckled, ruffling his quills a little bit; Sonic let her until she withdrew. "But my brain still needs you to pace yourself a bit. So why do you need to go to another planet?"</p><p>Sonic's face twisted with discomfort, and his only answer was sliding out of his seat and leaning along different surfaces as he walked somewhat clumsily to the sliding glass door. Once he made it, he pulled the curtains back just enough to poke his head out and look around outside, and without Sonic even having to say a word, Kit understood. She pushed herself up out of her chair and followed him to the door.</p><p>"Oh... You're scared of them?"</p><p>Looking back up to her, Sonic nodded again, brow pinching with concern. Kit folded her arms across her chest thoughtfully as Sonic let go of the curtains to let them close.</p><p>"So... your rings can basically teleport to anywhere in the world--"</p><p>"Anywhere in the <em>universe</em>."</p><p>"Right. And you need them to go somewhere safe from the military until the heat dies down, basically?"</p><p>"No," Sonic corrected, shaking his head. "They won't stop looking for me until they find me."</p><p>"That might..." Kit couldn't let herself finish her own doubtful assumption; to suggest it was an exaggeration of her government's military wouldn't be 100% truthful, but something about the way he said it hit the ear weird. Like this wasn't the first time he'd ran... "...actually, no, that sounds about right."</p><p>"Right," Sonic confirmed shortly. "So I need to get my rings back so I can go somewhere safe. So where's the Magic Kingdom?"</p><p>"In Disney World." </p><p>"Great. Where's Disney World?"</p><p>"In Orlando."</p><p>"Great. Where's Orlando?"</p><p>"In Florida."</p><p>"Great. Where's Florida?"</p><p>Kit's lips pursed as she saw a recurring pattern beginning to form. She'd initially just started this as a joke, but she was starting to actually suspect he actually had no idea where any of this was.</p><p>"Have you... ever been anywhere on Earth besides Green Hills?"</p><p>"No, why?" Sonic asked somewhat innocently, causing Kit to rub her eyes.</p><p>"Okay, this is gonna be a problem." </p><p>He really <em>didn't </em>know where anything was. Kit slowly breathed in through her nose before glancing to her calendar pinned up next to the sofa on the wall. Next week had "Disney World" written on it and circled in red ink anyway... She hummed softly to herself before pulling her phone out of her pocket and dialing Aubrey.</p><p>"Who're you calling?" Sonic asked with worry edging his tone.</p><p>"A friend, it's okay," Kit assured him, reaching down to pet his head as she waited for Aubrey to answer. "Hey, Aubrey?"</p><p>"<em>Hey, sweetheart, everything okay?</em>" </p><p>"Y-Yeah, yeah, everything's fine, I just, uh... We're gonna have to jumpstart our trip to Disney World."</p><p>"<em>Uuuh, why?</em>"</p><p>"Oh, f--Hun, it's a really long story I really don't have time to get into right now, but to keep it as short as possible - and I'm gonna need you to just run with me on this to save time - the wood gremlin's in my house and he's not a wood gremlin, he's actually a hedgehog from another dimension and his name's Sonic and he's actually in my living room right now, you wanna say hi?"</p><p>There was a very long pause on Aubrey's end as she took a minute to process everything Kit just told her rapid fire. Kit looked down to Sonic, who looked up at her with a cautiously raised brow, and smiled at him to let him know it was okay.</p><p>"<em>Oh, uh. Sure!</em>" Aubrey finally answered after she was done processing everything.</p><p>Kit put the phone on speaker and looked down to Sonic, who raised a cautious brow to her.</p><p>"You wanna say hi to my friend Aubrey?"</p><p>"Uh... Hi?" Sonic called over to the phone.</p><p>"<em>Hi! Aww, he sounds cute! Can we facetime? I wanna see!"</em></p><p>"Is that okay?" Kit asked quietly as she knelt down to Sonic's level.</p><p>"What's facetime?" Sonic responded suspiciously with another quirked brow, only for Kit to just press the facetime button and give Sonic the phone. </p><p>"Here, just point the camera at yourself," Kit instructed as Facetime loaded. "It's okay."</p><p>Sonic's eyes grew as his own image appeared on the camera. He smiled at what he saw, and his ears perked in surprise, but also a strange recognition, as Aubrey's pretty face appeared on her end. Her bright blue eyes lit up in amazed shock, and her free hand covered her mouth as she gasped.</p><p>"<em>Oh my gosh, look at you!</em>"</p><p>"Oh, heey! Firehair Lady!" Sonic practically gasped himself when he recognized her, his quills pricking up excitedly. "I know you! You and Wheels visited Lunch Lady a couple times!"</p><p>Aubrey's smile didn't deflate, but her brow pinched in confusion as she glanced over to Kit.</p><p>"<em>I'm sorry? Firehair Lady?</em>"</p><p>"Oh, Sonic didn't know anyone's names while he was hiding out in the woods, so I guess he gave everyone nicknames based on what he knew about them." Kit shrugged, looking down to Sonic affectionately. "Lunch Lady was mine, cause I fed him all the time. I guess 'Wheels' is referring to Cora, cause of her wheelchair... I don't think Cora was ever around long enough for anything else to stick."</p><p>"<em>Oooh, okay! I gotcha!"</em> Aubrey nodded in understanding, looking back down to Sonic fondly with a small shake of her head. "<em>Well, it's really nice to meet you finally! Sonic, right? </em><em>Goodness gracious, you've been hiding out in the woods all this time?</em>" </p><p>"Uh-huh," Sonic confirmed, looking over the fiery colors dyed into her hair. "I like your hair. It looks like hot-rod flames."</p><p>"<em>Aww, thank you, that's so sweet of you. I guess that's the explanation for 'Firehair Lady',"</em> Aubrey giggled before her eyes skimmed over to Kit. "<em>So Kit, hun, what's this about the Magic Kingdom?</em>"</p><p>"Sonic's being ET'd," Kit started very bluntly as she leaned closer to the camera. "Long story short: he's basically got portal-making-rings that can bring him somewhere safe but they ended up in Disney World by accident cause he got tranq'ed. I think they're somewhere around Cinderella's Castle. So we gotta go down and get 'em; we can't stay in one place for too long or they'll inevitably start scoping out my farm and my house. I don't think the military knows about the rings, though."</p><p>"<em>Ah, okay, gotcha. Hmm, lemme think...</em>" Aubrey's brow furrowed, soon looking to them rather seriously. "<em>Well... I have an annual pass to Disney World, so I'll tell ya what: Get some of the neighbors to cycle the milk for you and look after the farm while you're gone and stuff. Come down to Florida, and while you're on your way, me and Cora'll go to Magic Kingdom and poke around Cinderella's Castle. I'll find the bag and hold onto them for ya in case they find out and start scoping out Magic Kingdom."</em></p><p>"You'd do that for me?" Sonic asked sincerely, his ears pinning back as a foreign warmth filled his chest.</p><p>"<em>Of course, honey,</em>" Aubrey assured him with a sweet smile. "<em>I've never met you face to face, but whether you know it or not, you been woodland penpals with Kit for five years now, and that makes us all friends, as far as I'm concerned. Kit'll take good care of you; she knows how to handle life-or-death situations like this. She's been in plenty before.</em>"</p><p>Friends? They were all friends? Just like that? Really?</p><p>"You sure you're okay with you and Cora getting mixed up in something like that?" Kit asked with a small wince.</p><p>"<em>Don't worry, honey, I'll be okay,</em>" Aubrey assured her with a firm nod. "<em>There might be a few restricted areas of Cinderella's Castle I won't be able to get to, but I can at least narrow it down in the meantime. I can keep me and Cora at a relative distance from the whole situation. Trust me, we'll be okay."</em></p><p>"Okay, just... don't take any unnecessary risks," Kit urged her sternly. "Play it safe. For Cora's sake, at least."</p><p>"<em>I will, I promise."</em></p><p>Kit sighed softly under her breath, nodding in confirmation when Aubrey traced an X over her heart as a symbolic promise to be careful with getting too close to the situation. She and Sonic exchanged a look, and Sonic gave the both of them an appreciative smile.</p><p>"Thank you," he sighed with some relief, earning a small ruffle of his quills from Kit.</p><p>"Don't mention it," Kit chuckled softly.</p><p>Before another word could be exchanged, they both looked to the front door when the sudden vibrations of an approaching truck announced its arrival. While Sonic flinched, Kit took the phone back from him and looked back to Aubrey.</p><p>"Okay, Aubrey, we gotta go. I might call you from unknown numbers or through your work phones in the future, cause I gotta turn mine off. Don't call this one and if anyone from the police or government asks about me, deny everything," Kit instructed her sternly, to which Aubrey nodded obediently.</p><p>"<em>Of course! My lips are sealed,</em>" Aubrey promised. "<em>Put your laptop in incognito mode and switch your IP address through your VPN; they won't be able to trace your emails or your laptop that way, so you can still email me if you need to update me on anything, and keep up to date on everything going on. Your phone's gonna be harder to make untracable. I'll look into it and get back to you later, but for now, just shut it off and only turn it on if you absolutely need to."</em></p><p>"Right, gotcha. Thanks, I'll email you later. Oh--Sonic! The bag!" Kit suddenly recalled, grabbing Sonic's shoulder. "What does it look like?"</p><p>"Huh? Oh, right!" Sonic looked back to Aubrey. "It's brown with a big white... thing on it that says "emergency only" on it, and you close it with a string, and it's got all my rings inside."</p><p>"Gotcha! I'll poke everywhere around Cinderella's Castle and see what I can find," Aubrey assured him with a nod. "Alright, you guys stay safe.</p><p>"We will, Aubrey. Love you."</p><p>"<em>Love you!"</em></p><p>Kit quickly hung up and stood to her feet, scrolling through random numbers through her blocked numbers list to find a random number to call that wasn't Aubrey's, in case they tried to trace her last few phone call signals. When dealing with governmental wackjobs involved with anything alien, or even any normal life or death situation, she knew to consider every worst case scenario; paranoia was going to save her and Sonic's life, and she knew it. She listened to her phone dialing for a moment as she walked to the window closest to the front door, peeling back the blinds. </p><p>"Sonic, honey, can you still walk?" </p><p>"No, my legs feel like spaghetti right now," Sonic muttered, shaking his head. "They're right outside, aren't they?"</p><p>She peeked through the blinds. Robotnik's large black vehicle was parked in front of her house, as was Agent Stone's van. She pulled away when she faintly heard someone saying 'hello? hello?' on the other end, and hung up. With that, she powered the phone off completely and shoved it into her pocket. She'd have Aubrey email her and tell her how to make that untracable later.</p><p>She glanced over to Sonic, still helplessly standing in the middle of her living room, nervously fidgeting in place with his leg twitching in that same way hers always did when she was about to have a panic attack. </p><p>Sonic looked back up at her, looking down to him with that look of 'I'm freaking out internally but I'm doing my best to stay calm because there's a child here and I wanna be brave for him' that Longclaw had sometimes. The one she had right before he jumped through the ring the very last time he saw her.</p><p>"So... What do we do now?"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. How Not to Make Friends (Aka Robotnik Roast)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Okay, so they don't <em>know </em>you're in here," Kit pointed out aloud as she walked away from the door, looking down to him calmly after taking a slow breath. "They're outside, but they're not gonna be storming in here to look for you. They very very likely don't have a warrant to enter the place, which means they're legally not allowed to come in."</p><p>"Wh-What if they come in anyway?" Sonic argued with a concerned frown.</p><p>"I shoot, is what happens." Kit cracked her knuckles, snapping her fingers to call for Coal to heel as she started for the stairs to her bedroom. "I'm gonna go get some basic essentials. We're takin' my horse. We'll wait 'em out and when they leave for the rest of Green Hills, we'll bail."</p><p>"And what if <em>they </em>don't bail?" Sonic called after her up the stairs, leaning against the rail.</p><p>"Again: I shoot."</p><p>"Shoot what?"</p><p>"A gun, honey," Kit called back, and Sonic could hear her going through some drawers. "I normally don't put it up front and center cause I don't like to scare people, but I put up the 'Home Invaders will be shot' sign while you were out. These guys have never been around here, so for all they know, I've always been the one crazy Southern redneck who swings her gun around at anyone who looks at her funny. So hopefully they'll just take the hint and go away. Otherwise: I make good on the sign." </p><p>Sonic's fingers gripped along the curve of the wall. Kit sounded confident in her ability to handle this, but the egg-drones following after him seemed on a completely different level than what she might have been prepared for. He'd never taken his Lunch Lady to be a violent person or someone capable of handling herself in a fight; she'd always been very gentle, calm, someone who put everyone around her at ease, even if she was really timid and shy. If someone really came up to her and tried to threaten her, he wasn't sure if she could do more than try to scare them.</p><p>He didn't have much of a rebuttal or argument, though. He just waited by the stairs until Kit came back down wearing a change of clothes, the same kind of holster that Donut Lord always had on his belt on her hip, and a backpack in her hand, Coal still following her. She put the open backpack on the counter - where Sonic could now see she'd put his dirty orange backpack - and unzipped it, hurrying over to the phone attached to the wall. She checked one of a few sticky-notes pinned up to the wall beside it and dialed a number. </p><p>Sonic's ears twitched as he heard the ringing through the reciever, before they caught onto the sound of approaching footsteps. There was someone outside the front porch now. Twitching, he hurried over to Kit, stumbling just a bit in his panic before grabbing ahold of her pant leg to stabilize himself. He saw her glance to the door for a moment, but otherwise, all she did was put a hand on his head. She pat his head in reassurance, stroking down his quills calmly.</p><p>"H-Hi, Mrs. Zimmer? ...Yeah, hi, it's me, how are you?" She asked, trying to lean to catch any shadows through the blinds; thankfully, no one had actually stepped onto the porch yet, but she could hear people walking around outside. "Great, great, uh, hey listen. I just got some news from a family friend, and I gotta rush out for a few days. It's kind of an emergency. Do you think you could ask someone to look after the animals for a little bit while I'm gone?"</p><p>Sonic's grip tightened around the fabric of her pants as he heard footsteps step onto the porch. He pulled behind her leg, and with a wave of her hand, Kit silently urged for him to move further into the kitchen, out of sight from any of the windows. Following her gesture, he moved away from her and opened one of the cabinets, pulling himself inside and closing it behind him as best as he could. Kit didn't seem to stop him; he heard her walking around through the cabinet door.</p><p>"Great! Thanks, I appreciate it... Yeah, no everything's fine, just, uh... h-heading over to Oregon, that's all. Family emergency, that's all," she assured the elderly woman on the other line, opening the fridge door and a few cabinets as she spoke. "Yeah, I'll keep you updated on when I'm coming back. Thanks in advance. I wish I could stay and talk, but I'm in kind of a hurry. I'll call you soon. Thanks, Mrs. Zimmer."</p><p>Kit dashed away from the counter Sonic was hiding under and slammed the phone down on the receiver. She continued moving around, and it quickly clicked with Sonic that she was packing.</p><p>"Sonic, honey, when I said hide, I didn't mean in the cabinet," Kit muttered under her breath to avoid anyone outside hearing her.</p><p>"Oh, sorry, would you rather under the sofa? Under your bed?" Sonic shot back with a frown. "I've seen horror movies, I know how those go."</p><p>"And you got no business watching horror movies at--Wait." Kit paused and knelt down, and that was when the door to the cabinet opened. Sonic was met with her concerned frown. "How old are you?"</p><p>"Huh?"</p><p>"How old are you? I never actually caught your age," Kit pointed out upon realizing that she wasn't actually 100% sure how old the young hedgehog was; young, perhaps, but not exactly how old... he could have been small for his age for all she knew.</p><p>Sonic blinked. It had been a while since he'd done the math, and he'd stopped keeping track after a while, but... he looked down to the wood inside the cabinet in thought, counting the years off on his hand to do the math manually.</p><p>"8... 9... 10... 11..." Counting off a few fingers, he looked up to her with finality and certainty. "Thirteen."</p><p>"<em>Thirteen</em>?" Kit's eyes widened and she almost lurched away from the cabinet in shock; she knew he was young, but <em>that </em>young? "You're only thirteen?"</p><p>"Yeah?" Sonic squinted at the word 'only'. "What do you mean 'only'? How old are <em>you</em>?"</p><p>This only earned him a soft but critical look from Kit before she looked away at the sound of more noises on the porch. She looked back to him with a stern look, causing Sonic's frown to crumble into a more anxious look, his brow pinching nervously. Now that she know how young he was, she seemed to be even more stressed out.</p><p>"Okay, listen. I'm gonna keep packing up and get everything ready to motor. If they don't leave, I'm gonna see if I can't make them." Kit put a calm to Sonic's chest, making much more firm eye-contact, her voice cracking as she tried to repress her own stress. "No matter what happens, you stay in here until I tell you to come out, got it?"</p><p>All Sonic could think to do was nod before Kit backed away and closed the door. He pulled his knees up to his chest, scooting back into his quills hit the back wall of the counter. His breath tight inside his chest, he just sat there.</p><p>Listening and waiting. Not even wanting to entertain the idea of someone besides Kit opening the cabinet door.</p><hr/><p>Thirteen.</p><p><em>Thirteen</em>.</p><p>Of course he was thirteen.</p><p>She knew he was young, but why hadn't it clicked with her earlier that he was thirteen? Still practically a child, only barely a teenager, if his brain developed at the same rate as a human boy's did...</p><p>The only thoughts in Kit's head were continued urges to grab more things, reminders to check to see if anyone was trying to peer through the windows or knock down the door, and swearing.</p><p>Mostly swearing.</p><p>Coal stayed on her heels the entire time, sensing her panic and stress. Jasper was starting to bark at the door nervously, and Bella quickly ran over to the cabinet where Sonic was hiding, pacing anxiously in front of it. God, she still needed to get their stuff together to take them with her; she didn't wanna leave them behind for the government to get ahold of. They had no use for her cattle or flock; she could get those replaced with time. But her personal pets and service animal were something they could use against her. </p><p>She had plenty of food and water, all her personals and electronics were packed so they wouldn't have anything to pry into for information, clothes, medical supplies, toiletries, blankets, towels, medication... Her hand checked for her handgun in its holster just to check it off her mental list, ammo shells were in her left pants pocket, her pocket knife in her right... Tranquilizer gun and darts in her bag, taser... She could swing around the barn on her way off of the farm for grain for Bonnie, and there was some more camping supplies and survival equipment she could get from the shed on her way out too, in case they had to rough it.</p><p>Was she missing anything? </p><p>No, just needed the pets' stuff. </p><p>She quickly ran to scoop up the dogs' and cat's dishes, chucking the food and water rather hastily at the sink so she could quickly stack them together and stuff them into the bag. The bags and cans of dog and cat food came next, then she just needed their leashes and Coal's vest and harness, and they'd be all set. </p><p>As soon as the asshole outside left.</p><p>Grabbing the leashes and vest from the coat rack by the door, she took a chance on pulling the curtains next to the door away from the window to peer outside. A thin man dressed in black, Dr. Robotnik, was kneeling beside her flowers with examining eyes and a hand, a strange white drone hovering beside him.</p><p>"What the f..."</p><p>Kit pulled away from the window, briefly wondering whether or not to engage with the man. If she opened the door, he may have used this as an excuse to invite himself in. But then, if he did, she was armed, and she was pretty quick on the draw.</p><p>But what was that drone next to him capable of?</p><p>But what if he just invited himself in regardless?</p><p>She sighed heavily. She was going to end up dealing with this man no matter what, so she may as well get it over with. Before doing anything, she took her phone out of her pocket and took a moment to turn it back on. She waited for it to boot up, then swiped through to a memo app, turning on the recording feature. She just needed to get the encounter on audio in case anything happened...</p><p>Once she was sure it was recording, she stuffed it back into her jacket pocket, making sure it was well hidden. She whistled for Coal, who came over to her promptly and obediently. She strapped the vest and leash to his chest, making sure it was secure before standing back up with him. Taking a deep breath, she pulled her jacket aside to expose her gun holster, putting her hand on the hilt of the holster before opening the door. She poked her head out and started to slide out onto the porch with Coal by her side when Robotnik suddenly looked up to her.</p><p>"Can I help you?" Kit asked somewhat sternly as she pulled out and shut the door behind her, muffling Jasper's barking back inside.</p><p>Faster than he probably should have, Robotnik stood up fast and straight, stepping further away from her by only a few inches. He gave her a quick look up and down for a moment. Coal looked up at him warily, a small growl rumbling in his throat warning Robotnik to keep his distance.</p><p>"Good morning!"</p><p>"It's almost noon, but, uh, okay, yeah. Hi."</p><p>"I'm from the power company, inspecting the blackout," Robotnik explained rather convincingly, only for Kit to raise a brow at him. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take a few readings inside your house."</p><p>"You're not from the power company," Kit shot back rather bluntly, leaning back as she noticed Robotnik becoming visibly stiff when she denied his claim. "I have emergency generators to keep the milk supplies fresh, so my power's been back on all day and you'd literally have no reason to be here of all places. Tom and Wade would have sent someone over to the main grid, and they'd be going around back outside if someone needed to hook something up out back. Plus, I've had the military swarming in my backyard all day. So please just skip to what you're <em>really </em>doing on my porch before I even begin to <em>entertain </em>the idea of letting you in my house. <em>Sir</em>."</p><p>The longer she spoke with her raised brow, the stiffer Robotnik became. It was very clear that he wasn't used to other people talking down to him, or calling him out on his lies. Much less that quickly. Glancing down, Kit noticed him briefly hiding his hand behind his back for a moment, but he did little before bringing his arms back in front of him.</p><p>"Well... <em>ma'am</em>," Robotnik began with as much restraint and intention as he could manage, like he had to remind himself which referrals to use. Kit cringed at the use of 'ma'am', though. "You may have noticed that the entire town has been experiencing a power outage."</p><p>"I believe we just covered that, yes," Kit muttered with a slow nod, glancing around. </p><p>"20 minutes ago, I tracked an energy pulse with a similar signature to the one that caused that disruption," Robotnik continued, turning away and pacing down the porch; his eyes seemed to be looking over her windows. "And I've traced through this area."</p><p>"Mm. Interesting. And if the military's swarming around here, I'm assuming you're with them looking into the situation," Kit mused with a slow nod. "So if you're searching into this, I'm assuming you brought a copy of your search warrant."</p><p>Robotnik's stride paused as he turned back to her. Kit looked up to him with a purposefully risen brow, noticing his stiff, irritated look and the small twitch under his eye, and a hand found a way to Kit's chest as she faked a gasp. Robotnik may have been considerably taller than her, but she was used to standing up for herself to taller and scarier people. Coal started to growl a bit again, but Robotnik seemed to be ignoring her service dog. Coal didn't do anything else when Robotnik didn't act.</p><p>"Oh, wait, you mean you <em>don't </em>have one? Hence why you felt the need to lie you me and expected me to be dumb enough to believe you in try to get into my house because you're with the government and you think you're automatically entitled to going wherever you want? Interesting," Kit continued in as purposefully condescending a tone as she could manage before her brow lowered again and her hand went to her hip as Robotnik turned to face her now, his frown turning deep as he looked down to her. "Nice try, but I'm from the South; learning my legal rights was a matter of life or death down there. You're not gonna worm your way in that easy."</p><p>"Ooh, the <em>South</em>!" Robotnik's brow suddenly bounced up, as did his frown into a sarcastic smile, when she finished. "Well, that certainly explains a lot, doesn't it?"</p><p>Kit's raised eyebrow briefly asked him what he meant by that. She was getting a really condescending vibe off of this guy. It was starting to feel a little too familiar. Robotnik stood back in front of her, looking down onto her with an air of superiority and taking a quick breath in through his nose, seemingly to steady his temper.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Ms..."</p><p>"Mx, actually. I'm non-binary, I don't use Ms," Kit corrected with a firm shake of her head. "And it's Beaumont. Though I'm thinking about getting it changed. Doesn't suit me."</p><p>"Well Mx. Beaumont-pending-surname-change," Robotnik started rather simply; well as irritating as he was, at least he respected her identity without question. "What I am trying in apparent vain to explain to you is that a potentially powerful energy source with origins beyond your comprehension has been traced to this area, with suspicions of a link to foreign or domestic terrorism."</p><p>"Well, Mr--"</p><p>"Dr." Robotnik cut Kit off almost instantly. "Dr. Robotnik."</p><p>"Right. Dr. Robot...nik. Uh..." Kit ran a hand through her hair. Her head was starting to hurt; she just wanted to go back inside. "Yeah, I heard about the nature of the EMP blast. But it was too low to the ground to have been a foreign attack."</p><p>"Precisely," Robotnik agreed, stepping a little closer and prompting Kit's hand to tighten on her jacket instinctively, but her poker face didn't crack for an instant. "Now one would assume it may have been a domestic attack, but <span class="u"></span><em>my</em> findings have indicated something else entirely. Something... organic. Something that has found its way to your property in the past." </p><p>"Okay... And... how does that relate to you trying to get into a single lady's house?" Kit questioned, her head tilting slightly. </p><p>"Let me be clear: I can't imagine that you would be of the nature to conceal vital information concerning national security from a member of the United States Government," Robotnik assumed with a condescending handwave, to which Kit shook her head. "Because if you were--"</p><p>"I'm not," Kit interrupted, maintaining her even tone. "I know even less about what's going on than you do and if the path you're starting to go down is accusing me of domestic terrorism, then you need to come back with some actual evidence first. I'm just a farmer trying to keep to myself. You can ask anyone in town if I'm suddenly someone of any major concern; everyone knows me by now."</p><p>"I bet they do," Robotnik muttered almost a little bitterly. "I'm sure you're <em>hella</em> popular with the Jebs and Merls and Billy-Bobs in this glorified <em>gas station rest stop</em>. Bet you go way back to the days of tipping cows and playin' in a jug band!"</p><p>"Dude, that's, like..." Kit pointed out with a shake of her head and a deep, confused wince. "Deep South, this is Montana--"</p><p>"And maybe someday, you'll achieve your goal of getting a Costsco card or adopting a Labradoodle, but the reality is--"</p><p>"Got enough dogs, actually--"</p><p>Kit flinched when Robotnik suddenly cut her off by slamming his palm against the wall beside her head. Her hand grabbed the hilt of her gun, but did nothing with it. Coal immediately barked at the hostile movement, and his head bashed into Robotnik's leg to try to force him away. Kit pulled on his leash to make him heel when she realized that it was just a gesture to try to silence her.</p><p>"--I surpassed everything you're going to do before I was a toddler!" Kit looked up at him after his sudden bark, her breath hiking up as her back pressed up against the door anxiously; his eyes bored into her in an almost crazed way as his voice lowered again and his hand moved away from the wall. "I was spitting out formulas while you were spitting up formula."</p><p>"Rrrright..." Kit cleared her throat, reaching up to take her fogged up glasses off and use her shirt to clean them.</p><p>"Mx. Beaumont, are you familiar with US Code 904 Title 10 Article 104?"</p><p>"Anyone who attempts to aid an enemy of the United States will be persecuted," Kit parroted what she recalled from a stray Google search as she checked her lenses.</p><p>"And if I happen to be the one to catch you," Robotnik warned her, looking down at her as she drew out cleaning her glasses to look away from him. "It'll be even worse..."</p><p>"Right... Look, I, uh... " Kit slid her glasses on and finally looked back up to him after she'd swallowed her nerves and mustered up more reserve bravery. "I hope this isn't news, cause I really don't wanna be the one who has to break this to you... but a heavy thesaurus and a condescending additude won't make your dick look any bigger. Nor will it scare me into letting you into my house without a warrant when I know my rights and I know I have nothing to do with any of this. And it's starting to sound like you're threatening me, so if you're gonna try to overcompensate to someone with a vagina, you're tryin' the wrong person."</p><p>"Presumptious," Robotnik huffed as he took a step back, his brow furrowing down at her as he seemed to be calculating any number of ways he could legally get away with killing her. "I'm homosexual, actually."</p><p>"Oh. Oh! Oh, shit!" As though it had hit her like a freight train, Kit suddenly hid a laugh behind her hand. "Oh, shit, you're gay! Now I get it! You're a power bottom! Holy fuck, everything about you makes sense now!"</p><p>Suddenly, anything remotely scary about the situation had completely eluded her. Robotnik's mixed emotion of embarrassed and outraged was too amusing for her to handle without laughing her ass off against the door.</p><p>"Hey, don't give me that look, I'm a gay-leaning bisexual disaster, I'm allowed to make those jokes," Kit continued to laugh with a wave of her hand until her laughter finally died. "Aaah, okay, that just made my whole day. Thanks for that."</p><hr/><p>Unfortunately, the doctor had no intentions on leaving. And unbeknownst to Kit, in the middle of their conversation, when Robotnik had placed his hand behind his back, he had pressed several buttons to summon his smaller drones to survey the house. </p><p>Kit had made her house pretty airtight. The windows were closed, the attic was closed, even the chimney wasn't a viable entry-point for the tiny drones. But with enough inspection and investigation, they were able to find an open ventilation shaft that they could squeeze through and slip into the house. </p><p>They scanned the entire attic, with no avail. The second floor found no results.</p><p>Then they came to the first floor, and that was when Sonic heard the humming of those same drones from behind. Instinct kicked into overdrive, and his body curled up into a ball, quills pricking up sharply as Bella outside the cabinet began to hiss.</p><p>"Okay, don't freak out, don't freak out, it can't scan through doors, it can't scan through doors," he murmured to himself. "Right? It can't scan through doors--but what if it can? No, that's impossible--but what if it has x-rays? Shut up Sonic--it can't hear you--yes it can--<em>shut uuup!</em>"</p><p>Through the cracks of the doors of the cabinets, he could see a bright red light wash into the rest of the space amid the pots and pans. Bella continued to hiss and Jasper continued to bark outside. Sonic's heartrate spiked, and he didn't know whether to stay or move. His fight or flight instinct was kicking in, but he didn't know what to do or where to go. Kit told him not to move, but if he didn't move he might get caught.</p><p>Why wasn't Kit coming back in?</p><p>She was coming back in, right?</p><p>What if she got caught? Oh, no, she got caught, didn't she?  She got caught because of him, didn't she? The military got her! The quills began to conduct the same blue electricity from before as his breath hitched somewhat and the light krept closer on both sides. Oh, no, it was scanning through the doors! He couldn't scoot to either side of the cabinet without setting off their scanners! </p><p>He had to move, but why wasn't he moving?! Where was Kit?! </p><p>Suddenly, Bella shrieked from outside, and the light to his left suddenly vanished. He heard the metal of the drone slam against the wood of the cabinet as Bella seemed to lunge at it. It bounced against the other drone, slammed hard into a drawer, then fell onto the tile floor. Jasper suddenly raced over to them and started barking at the other drone as well.</p><p>The light was gone. Radar saved him...?</p><hr/><p>Kit whirled around at Bella's shrieking from inside and the sound of two loud slams from inside. Robotnik looked up to the closed door behind her, then back down to her, and the two of them made eye-contact. Kit could recognize that look in his eye; that look of 'Oh, I've finally caught you on a lie', but Kit was certain that Sonic hadn't come out of the cabinet. It had to have been Jasper and Bella fussing.</p><p>"O-Oh, I have dogs and a cat," Kit brushed off with a wave of her hand. "They fuss. The saying comes from somewhere you know."</p><p>"Oh, no. Old wive's tale, actually," Robotnik assured her as though he believed her, turning his head for a moment. "Back on topic--"</p><p>Before Kit could even process his movements to try to stop him, she found herself behind shoved to the side along with Coal with his superior physical strength. Though she was thrown aside, Coal jerked back on the leash and was able to help her keep her balance and prevent her from falling.</p><p>"Hey!!"</p><p>Successfully catching herself, Kit spun around and raced inside to follow Robotnik, who'd flung the unlocked door open and dashed into her kitchen. Coal followed after her. Laying in the middle of her kitchen was Robotnik's small drone, with Bella sitting nearly in front of Sonic's cabinet and looking up to her expectantly. Jasper was now quiet, sniffing the other one that was still up in the air, active, and scanning the refrigerator.</p><p>"I just wanna go on record:" Kit announced as she kneeled down to pick up the drone, turning to Robotnik with a tight glare. "This is not only a violation of my civic rights, but this is just... really... <em>really </em>stupid. Who'da thought that when the girl with a cat and dogs has noises and she tells you it's the cat and dogs, it'd turn out to be the cat and the dogs?"</p><p>She tossed the drone back at Robotnik, who caught the tiny machine with one hand, never taking his eyes off of her.</p><p>"And - <em>apparently </em>- a sci-fi investigation drone illegally scanning my damn house!" She barked up at him, hands on her hips. "How long have these things been in here?! What gives you the right?!"</p><p>"Listen. Here's the thing:" Robotnik started as he tossed his drone up and down in his hands. "I'm never wrong."</p><p>Kit rubbed an annoyed hand up her face under her glasses as her glare up to him intensified. With little patience left to offer him, Robotnik within mere feet of Sonic, and the sanctity of her home officially violated, all bets were off. It was time to go for the throat. She had Robotnik's character pegged from minute one and she knew right away how to go below the belt. </p><p>With a quick breath in, she began walking up to him until she was within inches of Robotnik's chest. </p><p>"Okay, look. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: No one gives a shit about how smart you are. No one cares. No one cares how many PHDs you have, or that you graduated from whatever colleges or got into the government in whatever year. No one <strong><em>cares,</em></strong>" Kit explained up to him with a furrowed brow. "If you think that you being a modern Einstein or being with the government gives you the right to do whatever the hell you want, or that you're entitled to everyone's praise and adoration and respect, or that you're better that everyone... you got a really naive, privilaged view of how the world works. You think bragging about how much smarter you are than everyone and how much better you are than everyone will get people's attention and respect, when really, no one gives a shit. It won't earn you respect, it won't scare me into admitting to guilt I don't actually have, and it won't fill the empty void from your lack of sincere relationships and personal satisfaction in life. You're the guy who flaunts their IQ on message boards and dating apps that everyone in said message board and dating apps rolls their eyes at and scrolls or swipes respectively. You're THAT... in a suit."</p><p>Kit looked him up and down for a moment, giving his outfit a quick glance before her eyes landed back on his tight, outraged expression.</p><p>"Or... whatever it is you're wearing. I actually don't know what that's called," Kit muttered with a shrug before frowning back up to him. "You're not the big man in the prison yard. What you <em>are</em>... is creepy and pathetic. Now get out of my house before I either call the cops or toss you out myself. Trust me: you're skinny enough and I'm fat enough."</p><p>Robotnik had little of a rebuttal, but he was nothing short of fuming. His face was almost red as he began to turn away from her. His body turned, but his head and eyes didn't, like he was fully aware that she was trying to hide something. Kit just folded her arms and took a step away beside Bella, Coal and Jasper, waiting for him to leave, hoping he didn't see how her hands were trembling from the adrenaline of having said everything she just said.</p><p>"And I don't wanna see you near my property again without a search warrant," Kit warned him again. "Or I'll make good of the sign outside."</p><p>Robotnik continued to say nothing as he started to slowly walk out, the drone left floating following along behind him. Kit started to smile slightly, almost satisfied at her small victory, until Robotnik's eyes fell to the drawer that had opened when the drone slammed into it earlier. It was the drawer closest to the door that led out of the kitchen. Kit's smile fell, and she opened her mouth to tell him to stop looking and go.</p><p>Before Kit could stop him, he reached in and pulled something out with a wide, smug smirk that made Kit's blood run cold.</p><p>Sonic's quill. Shit. She hadn't thought to grab it yet.</p><p>"Look at that. I was right," he bragged, waving towards his self-assured expression. "Note the lack of surprise."</p><p>Any bravery she previously held instantly leaving her in place of anxiety and shellshocked terror, Kit immediately stepped away, reaching down to wrap her arm under Bella's stomach and pick her up. Both Jasper and Coal started to growl and Bella began to hiss, all of their fur standing up on end as they surrounded her to try to protect their master from whatever was about to come next. Robotnik's smile fell in favor of a more impatient frown as another stronger hum approached the door.</p><p>"Shall we try this again?"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Becoming Fugitives</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The hum had migrated into the kitchen.</p><p>Sonic couldn't even breath a sigh of relief for more than two minutes when Kit had re-entered before the man who was with her apparently found evidence of his presence. The dogs were barking like mad, the cat was hissing, and Kit was slowly backing out of the kitchen and into the dining room away from the oncoming threat.</p><p>Sonic unfurled from his ball, slowly pushing the cabinet door open to peek through the crack. Another, way bigger drone had joined Robotnik, two turrets on its side aimed at Kit and her animals, who was backing away into the dining room and pulling the animals with her. If she wasn't yanking back on Coal's harness or physically pushing Jasper back with her leg, one of them might have assaulted Robotnik by now.</p><p>Robotnik was holding one of Sonic's quills in his hand, and a rock sunk into the pit of the boy's gut. </p><p>It was happening again. </p><p>"I'm going to give you five seconds to tell me where it is," Robotnik warned the woman sternly. "Five."</p><p>"I don't know what you're talking about," Kit denied, shaking her head as she backed off against the table to where she'd tossed the backpack when she was in the middle of packing the animals' supplies.</p><p>"Four."</p><p>"Hey, you broke into my house without a warrant!" Kit barked, her voice trying to sound brave but laced with terror as her hand dropped Bella to try to reach into the backpack behind her; Robotnik didn't stop her. "I didn't do anything wrong, you can't just kill a civilian!"</p><p>"You see a civilian, I see a potential threat to our national security," Robotnik defended, making it very clear that he had plausible deniability to cover himself as he kicked away Bella, who was trying in vein to attack his ankle.</p><p>"You're bluffing," Kit challenged defiantly, still searching for something in her backpack. "You're just trying to scare me, you're not gonna kill me if I don't tell you something I don't know."</p><p>"Oh, is <em>that </em>what you think?"</p><p>Robotnik swiftly pressed a button on the heel of his palm, and the side turret on the drone let out one brief shot down at Jasper. Jasper let out a loud shriek as the bullet sunk into the meat of his shoulder; nowhere life-threatening, but definitely a painful shot. Kit flinched and shrieked when Jasper backed away with his tail between his legs, whining and crying in pain as he scrambled to to hide amidst the dining room chairs, a trail of blood following behind him. Coal wrapped his body around Kit's legs defensively to try to put himself between her and the threat, continuing to bark at Robotnik wildly.</p><p>"Jasper!!"</p><p>The pit in Sonic's stomach formed into a nauseous sense of dread. This guy was... just like them. He seriously meant to kill if he didn't get what he was looking for... Snoozer was...</p><p>"You shot my dog!"</p><p>"Don't be so dramatic," Robotnik groaned with a roll of his eyes. "It was no major artery, he'll be fine. You, however, only have <strong><em>three </em></strong>remaining seconds before I try for something on you somewhat more life-threatening. I highly suggest wracking your brain a little harder. You might be able to come up with some lame excuse to go on living."</p><p>Kit really wasn't going to sell him out... It was happening again...</p><p>Kit let go of Coal's leash and nudged him away with her foot. Her breathing was heavy, and Sonic could tell; she was very quickly accepting the possibility that this was where she died.</p><p>"Coal, go get help," she ordered sharply, and obeying some kind of command, Coal followed suit and ran out of the dining room and out the open front door; Robotnik didn't stop him.</p><p>"Oh, that's <em>cute</em>," Robotnik almost chuckled. "You think <strong>that's </strong>going to save you?"</p><p>"No. You're gonna kill me," Kit admitted with a tight, trembling voice, her arms shaking back against the table, her eyes trying to stay brave and defiant... Why did she sound so okay with it?! "But when anyone in town sees my service dog, they know to come to my house. And what are people gonna think when they find a dead body right when the military's swarming all over the place? Or find me missing?"</p><p>"They think 'Oh, my. You think you know a person and they turn out to be a terrorist'," Robotnik sighed in a mock despondant voice, drawing closer to her as his voice drew deeper and darker. "And then, with time, like everyone else, they forget that you ever existed. So if you think anyone actually cares enough to try to find some sort of 'justice' after you're gone... I'd weigh your options again. <em>Two...</em>"</p><p>Kit swallowed hard... She had no further rebuttal. She stayed quiet, her eyes silently pleading with him to spare her. She wasn't going to sell Sonic out, but she was frozen in place, her fight-or-flight responses giving her no foreseeable way out. Whatever she did, whatever she might have been planning to do with whatever she was searching for in the backpack would have ended up with her getting shot. </p><p>Sonic couldn't just sit here and watch this happen.</p><p>Not again. If his mere presence could at least save someone's life, even if it was just to delay the process, he had to do something.</p><p>Anything! If he didn't, Lunch Lady was gonna--</p><p>"<strong><em>One</em></strong>--"</p><p>"Wait!"</p><p>He pushed the cabinet door open, zipping around the counter and into the dining room, throwing his hands up in surrender. Both adults looked down to him with newfound shock. Kit's anxiety was still there, but her terror was replaced with that shock, while the ever cool, calm, collected and taken-surprise-by-nothing Robotnik looked down to the small creature with wide, startled eyes. Even the small drone swiveled down to inspect him.</p><p>"Don't hurt her!" Sonic pleaded with Robotnik.</p><p>Robotnik, who was so collected and sure of himself beforehand, looked down at Sonic for a moment... and screamed. Loud and hard. It was a little unclear if it was in shock, terror, or some kind of disturbed delight, but it didn't matter. Kit looked back up to him, and saw her opportunity. Her grip tightening around the loaded tranquilizer gun inside of her backpack, with Robotnik's eyes finally taken off of her and the drone no longer aiming at her, she pulled it out of her backpack and fired at Robotnik's exposed neck.</p><p>Sonic flinched as Robotnik did. The serum immediately injected into Robotnik's neck and he reached up to remove the dart from his neck. Before he could even begin to process what had just happened, Kit - running on pure adrenaline - used the now empty tranquilizer gun as a blunt object and rammed it into the back of his head, throwing him to the ground. Sonic jumped back as Robotnik fell where he was once standing.</p><p>Sonic and Kit both exchanged brief eye-contact, both frazzled and stunned by her display of brunt force. Before a word of exchange, however, the drone suddenly began to blare loudly with alarms. Looking up, they both saw even more turrets extending from within it, aiming directly at Kit as its weapons began to charge. Bella ran away upstairs entirely and Jasper continued hiding under the table. Kit dropped the gun, dove to grab Sonic by the arm and pulled him to the floor behind the counter of the kitchen, yelping in shock as gunfire grazed the marble counter and sprayed around the kitchen and dining room.</p><p>"This feels excessive!" Sonic yelled above the gunfire as Kit guided around the counter to avoid the drone's aim with an army crawl.</p><p>"Dude, we passed excessive a long time ago!" Kit shouted back as they both wormed around back into the dining room.</p><p>Just as they passed into the dining room and back to the table close to where Jasper was wrapping around himself trying to lick his open wound, the gunfire stopped. Kit could hear the drone humming, trying to recharge its weapons, and she peered out from behind the corner of the table. Her kitchen had been completely torn apart with gunfire, the appliances destroyed, the tile and marble cracked and her cutlery smashed to pieces, and the drone was still aiming at them... but there were gaps in between gunfire. So they would have their openings if they played it smart.</p><p>Catching onto this himself, Sonic glanced to the fridge. It had also be barraged with gunfire, but being made of metal, it had seen the least amount of damage. It was also one of the tallest fixtures in the kitchen and a good vantage point... and an idea was struck.</p><p>"Okay, honey, you stay here," Kit muttered back to him as he started to ignore her order and crawl away from her, going unnoticed as she was focused on the drone. "I'm gonna try to get this thing while it's charging, okay?"</p><p>When she got not answer, Kit looked behind her, and Sonic had left completely by the time she looked back her. Sonic snuck around through the kitchen, climbed up the counters and onto the top of the fridge, evading dettection by the drone as it was fixated on Kit still. He made eyecontact with Kit when Kit looked back up, and she tried to fervently signal for him not to do what she was 800% sure he was going to try doing. He just gave her a reassuring grin and nod before Kit had to duck behind the table again to avoid gunfire.</p><p>"HIYA!!"</p><p>Right as the drone began to fire again, Sonic lept onto the back of it. Thrown off balance, it spun around wildly, shooting at everything except its main target. Kit crawled under the counter to grab Jasper, pulling him out and gently guiding him away from under the table. He shrieked and whined, not wanting to move from his bullet wound.</p><p>"I know, baby, I know it hurts, but you gotta move," Kit comforted him as she tried to guide him to the safer living room while the drone continued shooting at nothing; she glared back at the scene with a small scolding expression, shouting over the gunfire as she continued to crawl along the floor. "Sonic, that's the opposite of a solution!"</p><p>"No worries, I got it right where I want it!"</p><p>"No, you don't!" Kit objected as Jasper was safely hidden behind the sofa, pulled herself back into the dining room with a crouching dash.</p><p>"Can you believe Amazon is deliver packages with these things?!" Sonic hollered as he tried in vain to tug on the drone.</p><p>"Amazingly, yes!" </p><p>"This was a horrible plan! What was I thinking?!" Sonic quickly realized when the drone finally stopped firing, but still kept spinning around. "I'm gonna puke!"</p><p>"Sonic, get off the drone!"</p><p>"Yes, please!" </p><p>Sonic let go of the drone and let it fling him off. Once Sonic was on the ground, Kit stood up, grabbed the nearest object, that being a dining room chair, and smashed it into the drone. The chair burst into pieces and splinters from the force, but the drone also slammed into the wall and fell to the ground, humming and beeping until its lights went dark. Kit's hands were gripped firmly and tightly around the top of the chair's remains, and she had to manually make herself drop it. </p><p>Sonic pushed himself up and glanced up to the drone before watching Kit look down to Robotnik, still tranquilized and unconscious. Her breathing labored and heavy, she grabbed him by the back of his suit and started dragging him out of the dining room and towards the pantry.</p><p>"Sonic, hun, can you cover your ears for a few seconds?" Kit asked him as she grunted against Robotnik's weight.</p><p>"Uh, sure?"</p><p>Sonic covered his ears, pressing down hard to muffle the noise as Kit opened the door to her pantry, pulled Robotnik's body up, and shoved his body in. She was yelled as she started hitting and kicking his unconscious body; Sonic wasn't sure what she was saying... but if she asked him to cover his ears, she was probably swearing. Like he hadn't seen R-Rated movies behind her back before. He watched her take a few seconds to take her anxiety and anger out on Robotnik's tranquilized body before  pulled away and shutting the pantry door, huffing loudly and running to the dining room again to grab a chair.</p><p>"Feel better?" Sonic asked as he took his hands away from his ears.</p><p>"Somewhat," Kit sighed, pulling the chair with her as she brought it to the kitchen and used it to bar the pantry door. "Can you go lock the front door, please?"</p><p>Within seconds, Sonic was able to close the front door, lock it, and come right back. When he came back, he found Kit grabbing a plastic cup from one of the broken cupboards, filling it with water and chugging the entire thing. She dropped it and ran a hand through her hair, still shivering from nerves and adrenaline. Sonic's ears pressed back against his head.</p><p>"You okay?" She asked once he came back.</p><p>"Y-Yeah?" Sonic confirmed with a nod.</p><p>"Good..." </p><p>"You okay?" Sonic parroted up to her.</p><p>"Yeah... I'm fine," Kit assured him, moving around the counter to head back into the living room. "Go upstairs and get a couple of the dark towels from the closet in the hallway, please. I need something to stop the bleeding on Jasper's shoulder."</p><p>Sonic ran upstairs and threw open the door, climbing up the shelves to grab two of the black towels from the pile. An avalanche of towels fell after him, but he just ran back downstairs to find Kit in the living room with Jasper in her lap. He handed her the towels, and she started to pad Jasper's shoulder. He whined and cried, and Kit shushed him as Sonic felt Bella nestle herself beside his feet.</p><p>"I know, baby, I know... It's okay..." She whispered to him, pressing down with onto hand and petting his head with another. "You're okay..."</p><p>"I-I'm sorry, I--"</p><p>"Hey, don't worry about it," Kit cut him off with a shake of her head, turning to look over her shoulder with a small smile. "It's not your fault. He'll be okay."</p><p>'It's not your fault.'</p><p>What was it about hearing that from her that felt so... weird?</p><p>Kit looked back down to Jasper, wrapping the towel over the wound.</p><p>"Well... Coal's off going to get help, and I guess Jasper can't come with us now, so... I guess it's just gonna be you, me, Bonnie and Bella," Kit mused.</p><p>"Who's Bonnie?" Sonic asked as he listened out for more sounds, keeping his attention on the pantry in case Robotnik woke up.</p><p>"My horse," Kit confirmed, careful not to get blood on her clothes, before reaching into her pocket to find her phone... it was still recording.</p><p>She stopped the recording, quickly sent a text to Tom saying 'Coal's on his way. Come to my house asap. Emergency. Won't be here when you get here. Take Coal and Jasper to Zimmer. There's a guy in the closet. Don't let him see you, and don't wait for him to wake up to try to arrest him. He'll kill you and get away with it. Just let him leave.', before turning it off and putting it back in her pocket. She felt bad for being so vague towards him, but she really had no other options. She sighed heavily and carefully picking Jasper up, pulling him up and standing up.</p><p>"I'm gonna go take him upstairs," Kit started, looking down to Sonic, still a little out of breath. "There's a bag of dog food and two dog bowls in the bag. Follow me up with 'em."</p><p>Sonic nodded, racing to the backpack and finding the items she instructed him to get before following her upstairs. Kit carried Jasper into her bedroom and carefully laid him on the bed before taking the food and bowls from Sonic.</p><p>"Go wait downstairs," she continued. "I'm gonna make sure he's okay and take care of a few last things. Once I'm done, we're gonna get out of here. We don't wanna be here when Mr. Personality wakes up."</p><p>"Okay."</p><p>Sonic hurried out of the door and back downstairs. He could still hear Jasper whining from his injury upstairs. He looked around Kit's destroyed dining room and kitchen, and couldn't help feeling somewhat responsible for the mess... Then again, if he hadn't come out when he had, she might have been dead altogether. </p><p>He glanced back up the stairs. He was still having trouble wrapping his head around the situation. Why she seemed so patient about the whole thing; why she seemed so... okay with all of this. Well, not okay with it, she was scared and angry, obviously. Not not at him.</p><p>'<em>It's not your fault,</em>' she'd told him...</p><p>The words still felt foreign.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>August 17th, 2020</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Twenty Minutes Later...</strong>
</p><p>Sheriff Thomas Michael Wachowski pulled up onto the Angel Isle property line, turned off the gas, threw the door open and raced up to the front porch, Coal bounding after him.</p><p>He almost never got an emergency phone call out here in Pleasantville Greenhills. To be honest, it almost felt a little dull; boring, even. But when he got the text from Kit, he suddenly had a newfound appreciation for the lack of that feeling of panic and worry for one of his friends. Even worse, on his way there, he found Coal traveling the path off the property all by himself; in typical service-dog fashion, something that only happened when Kit was having a dire emergency.</p><p>He ran up the steps and pounded on the door, Coal barking and scratching at the door for a moment. Tom looked across the door for a moment, realizing very quickly that there was no doggy-door for him or Coal to squeeze.</p><p>"Green Hills Police!" He called, receiving no answer. "Open up!"</p><p>Tom tried the doorknob, only to find that it was locked. He could hear Kit's other dog barking from inside, on the second floor, but Kit wasn't responding. He'd tried to text her back, but none of it even registered that any of his messages were even being delivered, like her phone had been shut off right after she sent the text. </p><p>With no response, he resorted to removing his gun from his holster and bashing the butt of it at the door handle. Doing this a few times proved successful in knocking the door handle off, and he was able to shoulder his way into the house. Aiming his gun into the open house, he looked around at the scene before him.</p><p>"Freeze!" He ordered anyone who might have been present.</p><p>He paused, freezing when he found the kitchen and dining room completely destroyed. Two machines collapsed on the ground, one hovering by the pantry door - which was barred by a chair - a chair smashed and discarded on the ground. That must have been the guy that Kit was talking about... A spray of blood against the wall, trailing under the table and along into the living room. </p><p>"Oh, shit..." </p><p>He ran into the living room, only to find no one there. He found a small collection of blood in front of the sofa, then found small droplets in a trail leading to the stairs. He raced upstairs and ran through the hallway.</p><p>"Kit? You up here?" He hollered again, finding the only presence upstairs to be Jasper, wrapping up in towels on Kit's bed, helplessly lapping up water from the water bowl sitting in front of him... So this is what she meant... "Oh... Hey, buddy..."</p><p>He slid the gun back into his gun and slowly inched towards Jasper. Jasper looked up to him with pained eyes as Coal followed him into the room, sniffing around in search of his master before just jumping onto the bed, whining. Tom let Jasper sniff his hand anxiously before licking it. He pet his head in reassurance before pulling out of the room. He had to get these dogs somewhere safe after this...</p><p>A quick sweep of it found the second floor was empty. There was no basement to check... The sliding glass door wasn't open though, but he was gonna have the department check the rest of the property.</p><p>A sudden bang alerted him to a presence downstairs. He quickly raced downstairs, hiding in the corner against the stairs to keep out of sight, and he watched Agent Stone rush into the room from the back door, looking around the room frantically before rushing to the pantry closet. He removed the chair and opened it, finding Robotnik unconscious. </p><p>"Dr?" He pulled something from his coat - smelled salts, probably - and waved it under his nose to wake him up.</p><p>Robotnik's eyes opened, and he sat up instantly, grunted in an immense amount of pain and shouting something in a foreign language. Agent Stone supported Robotnik's injured body as Robotnik tried to stabilize himself. Tom's first instinct was to tell the both of them to freeze, but with Kit's warning looming in the back of his head, he pulled away, opting to listen and escape with the dogs once they left instead.</p><p>"Are you alright?" </p><p>"Take a look over and ask yourself that again, genius," Robotnik hissed with an irritated look, trying to straighten himself. "The creature was here."</p><p>Creature...?</p><p>"The owner was hiding it. She was conspiring with it," Robotnik huffed, looking around the house. "No doubt they've already gone."</p><p>"We haven't seen any vehicles leaving the property line, Dr," Agent Stone reported.</p><p>"Of course you haven't," Robotnik grunted with a roll of his eyes, pressing a few buttons on his palm. "The owner of this house doesn't own any vehicles, she would have left on foot or horseback. She went to great lengths to hide this creature from us..."</p><p>"Dr?"</p><p>"Whatever this thing is, Agent Stone," Robotnik began, looking about the room before he started to stroll out the front door. "It's our job to secure it, neutralize it, uncover the source of its power, and if it resists... we take it apart, peice by piece, and see what makes it tick."</p><p>He paused only for a moment to kneel down, pick up something thin and blue, pass it to his agent friend, and stroll out the front door.</p><p>"Oh, and call Optical Illusions. Tell them I need new frames," he ordered. "They know what I like."</p><p>Tom watched them head out the front door before he pulled back up the stairs as quickly as possible. He hurried back into Kit's room, staring at Jasper and Coal helplessly. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Kit still wasn't answering any of his texts.</p><p>What was going on?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. The First Step Is Not a Graceful One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>August 17th, 2020<br/>2:56 PM</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Green Hills County Line</strong>
</p><p>Going by horseback was about as slow as one would expect. By the time they encountered the "Welcome to Green Hills!" sign, it was almost three in the afternoon.</p><p>Bonnie was a pretty well-trained mare, was very fit and had a lot of stamina, so she was well equipped to make long-distance trips. She couldn't run the entire way, of course, but she could walk most of the way with the occasional trots and bursts of running. They just had to pace themselves.</p><p>Thankfully, the advantage of going by horseback was being able to go off-road, so instead of having to evade the police, military and civilians on the road, Kit and Sonic began cutting through the trees of the mountains to straight-shot it through to Florida. But they could already tell it was going to be slow going.</p><p>"And you're <em>sure </em>you don't have a car?" Sonic asked for probably the fourth time as he looked down from behind Kit, Bella secure in his lap.</p><p>"Maybe if you ask me a fifth time, a Toyota will magically appear next to us," Kit shot back sarcastically with a roll of her eyes.</p><p>"Really?" Sonic's tone sounded genuinely hopeful, his ears perking up.</p><p>"No. Look, just be grateful we're not going on foot," Kit sighed, rubbing her face. "Or God forbid, the bus."</p><p>"What's wrong with the bus?"</p><p>"It's the worst possible option," Kit started, shaking her head. "It's crowded and loud, and too many people would see you, and it'd be way too easy for Robotnik to track--god, that's such a stupid name, who names themselves that?"</p><p>"Lame people," Sonic agreed, leaning forward to rest his head against her back and grinning when she snorted in amusement. "When're we gonna get there?" </p><p>"I'm not sure, but by horseback... it's definitely not gonna be overnight," Kit explained, looking up through the thick wood for a moment. "I'll have to do the math when we stop somewhere with a wifi connection. Maybe find some way to cut down on travel time... I dunno. Bonnie has to rest and eat, and so do we. And I gotta stop to bury her poop to minimize the chances of Robotnik tracking her. So... yeah, it's gonna take us a while to straight-shot it to Florida."</p><p>Sonic groaned, burying his face into the back of her jacket and gently gripping at Bella's fur as Kit could only roll her eyes; it was partial affection, partial annoyance.</p><p>"It's gonna take foreeeeeeeeeeeever to get here like this!"</p><p>"Yes, yes it is," Kit agreed calmly, letting go of the reins to reach around for the compass in her pocket, checking to make sure she was still going Southeast before her tone perked up. "But hey! Now you know what it's like to ride a horse! Kinda."</p><p>"Yeah, how 'bout after next rest stop, I drive?" Sonic suggested as he pulled away, smirking up to her back.</p><p>Kit laughed for a moment, though her chuckle was blended with both amusement and concern.</p><p>"Sonic, hun, you can't just get on a horse and just 'drive'," she pointed out. "It takes months of practice to get good at it, and even longer to earn the horse's trust. And Bonnie in particular is kinda... skittish with new riders. It's probably better if you stuck to just riding."</p><p>"Awww, come ooooon," Sonic protested with a tiny pout. "I can't just stare at your back the whole trip."</p><p>"You won't," Kit reassured him, glancing up to the sky for a moment to think of something to take his mind off of the long travel time. "We're gonna be making plenty of stops. You ever been camping before?"</p><p>Sonic sat up at the word 'camping', his eyes lighting up as one free hand wrapped around one of her arms excitedly.</p><p>"No, I haven't! Are we going camping?!"</p><p>"We're gonna have to," Kit couldn't help laughing at his excitement. "We might be able to stop at a few cheap motels who don't ask too many questions here and there, but for the most part, we're gonna be roughing it."</p><p>"You mean like real Boy Scouts?!"</p><p>"Something like that. I swore off fishing after one too many hook related incidents," Kit grumbled, shaking her head with a grimace at the painful memories of hooks being where they didn't belong before patting the supplies strapped to Bonnie's saddlebag. "But I pretty much have everything else you need for basic camping."</p><p>"Like making s'mores?" Sonic asked with a tug on her jacket.</p><p>"Not s'mores, unfortunately," Kit sighed apologetically, patting his hand. "I don't keep marshmallows on me or graham crackers on me. But I did bring hot dogs to roast. And there's a tent we can sleep in; the camo should keep us pretty well-hidden. We'll wanna keep the fire relatively self-contained, though, so they don't find us with our smoke-trail..."</p><p>Her smile fell. As much as Kit just wanted to pretend that this was just a normal camping trip to make this easier on the small child sitting behind her, petting the cat and looking around at the trees and afternoon sky, there was always something bringing her back to the grim reality of the situation. This was serious. People were seriously hunting the two of them and were willing to kill her to get to Sonic; to use him or dissect him or... something. He'd already seen Jasper get shot...</p><p>As a still quiet fell over the two of them, her memory fell back to their initial conversation after Kit carried Sonic to the bathroom. He'd told her all about how he'd been living in a cave for the last ten years, watching everyone living their lives, including her. How he'd been hiding from everyone because he was worried of this exact scenario playing out. He'd told her he was from somewhere else... but it only occurred to her then just then that she never had the time to ask for any details on how he got to Earth.</p><p>"Hey, Sonic?"</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>"You said you were from another dimension, right?"</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>"And you've been here for the last ten years, right?"</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>"So... You were three when you came to Earth, right?"</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>"So..." Kit twisted her head around to look down to Sonic with a concerned frown, watching him look up to her with an innocent beam and a small smile. "Do you remember how you got here, or have you just always been here?"</p><p>Her heart just about broke when Sonic's smile fell and his ears pinned back against his head. Bella leaned her head into his stomach, and he held her close... almost instinctively. Kit turned away to continue watching the road, waiting patiently for Sonic to answer. The air became thin and cold when the question lingered just long enough for Kit to start regretting asking it.</p><p>"I remember," she heard Sonic murmur from behind her; it was such a sad, quiet little mutter.</p><p>"That's... surprising," Kit opted to say instead of pressing for him to continue. "Most human kids can't remember that far back. I can't even remember stuff from when I was seven, let alone three."</p><p>"Mm..."</p><p>"How'd you get here?" Kit hesitantly asked. "Was it... with a ring?"</p><p>"Yeah," Sonic muttered, nodding quietly. </p><p>"Did anyone else come with you, or..." The answer to the question she was trying to ask was obvious, but to get all her answers, she needed to ask; just... it was hard to imagine a small child living out there all alone in the woods for ten solid years, no one looking after him... "...or has it just been you all this time?"</p><p>"Nope, just, uh... just-just me," Sonic confessed, shaking his head and leaning forward against her back.</p><p>Kit frowned down at Bonnie at what barely constituted for weight against her back. He came here all by himself when he was just three years old? And had able to take care of himself in all that time? Just how did his species operate? </p><p>"Well, you know, honey, you didn't have to just stay out in the woods the whole time," Kit pointed out with a gentle warmth in her tone. "You could have just knocked on the door and asked to come in. I mean... heck, if I'd known all this time that the thing I was feeding was a little boy, I'd have scooped you up and taken you into my house a long time ago. Not just fed you like a lost puppy."</p><p>"You don't understand."</p><p>Kit blinked at the sudden severity to Sonic's tone as he buried his face into her jacket before pulling away from her. He didn't follow up with anything for a minute or two; he was nervous. He needed some coaxing to help him open up.</p><p>"What don't I understand, honey?" Kit asked patiently.</p><p>"I know you would have," Sonic sighed almost despondently, hand stroking Bella for comfort. "You're nice. <em>Everyone </em>in Green Hills is nice. If I let you all know I was real, you guys would have been nice to me from the beginning. At least, I think you would've."</p><p>"Carl might have had a few misgivings after the first seven years," Kit joked bluntly, earning a small, weak laugh from Sonic; it was enough to make her smile. "But yeah, even he would have forgiven you and accepted you as family. So where's the 'but'?"</p><p>"But if I let everyone know who I was - about my power - Robotnik would have found out about it. Or someone like him. And he would have..." Sonic trailed off, and Kit could hear a small tremor of genuine worry riding his tone. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt. And to be fair... I wasn't wrong. I knocked out the power, Robotnik came, and you almost... Snoozer got hurt and you almost died."</p><p>"I'll be honest, after a while, in all my panic and stress, I forgot you were in the cabinet," Kit admitted, reaching up to rub her temple. "You shouldn't have seen anything like that... you're too young."</p><p>"I'm not that young," Sonic protested with a small frown.</p><p>"In the grand scheme of things, yes you are." Kit grabbed the reins again, rubbing them between her fingers nervously as she sighed fast. "So... just so I'm sure I got this right... you've been hiding out in the woods this whole time because you were scared people were going to hunt you down for your power; that power being 'gotta go fast'... apparently. And who told you that that was gonna happen? You didn't just get that idea from movies, did you?"</p><p>"No, it..." Sonic paused, glancing to the ground again. "It's... happened before."</p><p>"What do you mean?"</p><p>"Before I got to Earth."</p><p>"Oh. I'm... getting backstory vibes from the way you said that," Kit sighed.</p><p>"Yeah, that's about right."</p><p>"I get it if it's too personal. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Kit assured him, to which Sonic shook his head.</p><p>Hesitating, Sonic's eyes trailing up to the sky as he strained to recall the day he was forced away from his home planet. Kit didn't say anything more than that, passing control of the conversation over to him; whether he wanted to go into it was his choice. After a moment, he seemed to take the opportunity, take a breath and nodding gently.</p><p>"I don't remember what the planet was called, but, uh... I grew up on a place called South Island," Sonic started with an extension of trust in his voice, and Kit nodded to let him know she was paying attention. "It was nice. Green grass, giant loop-deloops, sandy beaches, big forests everywhere... and no schools."</p><p>"UGH." Kit leaned back slightly, somewhat melodramatically so as to make Sonic laugh; she succeeded. "SO JEALOUS. I'd kill to live in a world where school doesn't exist."</p><p>"Hahah, yep! It was just me and Longclaw!"</p><p>"Longclaw?" Kit asked curiously, sitting back up now.</p><p>"Yeah! She was kinda like my... Obi Wan Kenobi," Sonic explained with a small shrug. "She was a big owl warrior who lived for a reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally long time and she took me in when I was just a baby. And she took really good care of me. She kept me safe. We went fishing, picked flowers, hunted bugs, raced..."</p><p>"She sounds cool. Was it just you and her?" Kit questioned softly down to him. "Or were there other people on the island?"</p><p>"Nah, just, uh... just me and her. Most of the time. People visited sometimes, ya know with boats and stuff. But, uh... no one lived there. Just us." Sonic leaned forward to rest his cheek against her back; Bella crawled around to sit down in his lap, and he wrapped his hands around her. "She told me to keep my powers secret."</p><p>"So you've always had them?"</p><p>"Yep. Born with 'em. But, you know, since it was just me and her on the island most of the time, and I was too fast for anyone to see, I just did whatever I wanted," Sonic chuckled.</p><p>"As most children would do," Kit laughed with him. "Heck, if <em>I</em> had super speed at your age... God, the things I'd do with supersonic speed at three years old. Mass pandemonium."</p><p>"<em>You</em>?" Sonic frowned in disbelief at her claim. "Causing mass chaos?"</p><p>"I sense your funny look," Kit almost chuckled with a proud smirk on her face. "But I was the kid somehow finding a way to shut down an entire Walmart when I was two, <em>without </em>superpowers."</p><p>"No way, shut up!" Sonic's mouth was practically ajar for a moment.</p><p>"I'm serious!" Kit laughed, running her hand through her bangs with newfound energy. "I have no clue how, but somehow, I managed to shut down an entire Walmart because my mom had the brilliant idea to leave me alone on the counter beside the register while she was checking out. Leave a human baby alone with shiny buttons, cashier wasn't paying attention, slip slap bop, BOOM. All the registers crashed. And NO ONE could figure out how! Mom went pale as a friggin' <em>bedsheet</em>!" </p><p>Sonic had to hold onto her jacket as he burst out laughing behind her, and Kit leaned forward to stabilize herself as she started laughing with him. It filled the otherwise empty wood with a joyous energy that the air had been sorely lacking for the last few hours; an energy they had been desperately needing.</p><p>"I can't believe it!"</p><p>"It's true, though! The cashiers were both cracking up and panicking, the managers were just... CONFUSED! I singlehandedly shut down an entire Walmart at age <em>two</em>! I was so proud of everything going on and I have no idea why!" </p><p>The two shared their laughter with one another for a few seconds longer before it faded into the wind. As it died, Kit cleared her throat, her hand twisting around her ponytail nervously.</p><p>"I-I'm sorry, I totally got off track," she chuckled sheepishly, looking over her shoulder to him with an apologetic look. "You were talking about where you came from."</p><p>"Right, right..." Sonic sighed out the rest of his laughter and chortles as his eyes scrolled back down to the ground, his ears falling a bit. "So, uh... yeah. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to what I did cause I was so fast. But, uh... One day, I came back to her hut - Longclaw's hut - saw I went to this field where we picked sunflowers."</p><p>"Aww..." As Sonic's tone fell away, Kit could tell that he was about to deliver the unfortunate punchline to his awful beginning; she had to put as much of a happy face on it as she could. "That's sweet of you."</p><p>"Yeah-hah. And when I got there, it was fine at first," Sonic explained with a small shrug; he paused, his hand tightening on her jacket as his smile finally fell completely. "But, uh... after I got back, we were attacked by echidnas. I mean, it wasn't the first time either--I-I mean..."</p><p>Sonic's opposite hand anxiously stroked Bella's fur as his brow furrowed, his mind struggling to recount events from a full decade ago. Kit looked over her shoulder to him, opening her mouth to say something, but biting her cheek to remind herself to let him sort out his thoughts. She wanted to give Sonic room to talk, but when he stuttered and stumbled, nervous and unsure of how to explain, Kit looked forward again, opting to try to help him out.</p><p>As much as she didn't want to discuss the idea of Sonic and his guardian being attacked, she wanted to understand.</p><p>"One thing at a time, honey," she urged him gently, hearing him take a slow breath inwards. "You were ambushed by the... lemme make sure I got it right--echidnas?"</p><p>"Yeah." Sonic nodded.</p><p>"And it wasn't the first time they'd attacked you?"</p><p>Sonic shook his head, his eyes wandering to the trees they passed by.</p><p>"Not the first time they attacked <em>her</em>. Longclaw. Trying to find <em>me,</em>" he corrected.</p><p>"Oooh, okay," Kit murmured softly, nodding once she was finally back on track.</p><p>"I dunno if anyone else had ever tried looking for me, but Longclaw always said that they were trying really hard to find me," Sonic continued, Bella kneading at his leg. "She bounced across a couple islands before ending up on South Island, thinking we'd be safe there, I guess. And I always thought that they couldn't find us on our island in the middle of the ocean... and even if the found the island, I was too fast, they wouldn't be able to see me, ya know?"</p><p>"Uh-huh..."</p><p>"But I, uh... guess I was wrong." Sonic paused, and Kit looked over her shoulder again to find Sonic looking away from her, trying really hard to make sure she couldn't see his face. "They found her hut. She tried to fly away, but they shot her and she couldn't fly anymore. So, uh... she opened a ring to Earth, gave me her rings and told me to come here. She told me to stay safe and stay hidden."</p><p>"And she didn't come with you...?" Kit asked, having to restrain her shocked tone as Sonic looked back to her in defense of his guardian.</p><p>"She <em>couldn't</em>," he insisted firmly, his hand patting her hand to make certain that Kit wasn't getting angry at Longclaw. "Rings stay open for a while after you jump through. If she'd come through with me, they'd have followed us here. And there were a lot, so--so she couldn't take all of them at once while she was hurt and old and... stuff."</p><p>"Ooh, I get it." Kit nodded as Sonic's explanation clicked with her. "She stayed behind so they couldn't just take her down, grab your rings and take you back; that'd kinda defeat the purpose of sending you through to begin with, I guess..."</p><p>She frowned, shaking her head.</p><p>"I... understand the thought process, I guess, I'm just... ugh." She grunted, glaring at the ground. "Just not what I'd've done. But I'm not an all-knowing thousand-year-old guardian owl-warrior with the wisdom of the universe, I'm just an overprotective millennial with mother issues, so what do I know?"</p><p>Kit turned to look back around to Sonic again when he didn't continue any further. That must have been the end of his story... Her shoulders fell and her hands loosened from around Bonnie's reins as she turned back around to look ahead. The trees didn't seem to be letting up at all. Bonnie wasn't tired yet, but they weren't hitting any road yet either. Kit couldn't hear any oncoming traffic, so either they were near dead traffic or the highway was nowhere in sight. Either way, she could keep an ear out for drones.</p><p>"Well... I guess I can understand why you'd be nervous about talking to anyone after all that," Kit sighed again; she was never good at comforting people through traditional means... at least not in person. She hoped empathy was enough. "So... can I ask you something else?"</p><p>"Mm-hm."</p><p>"Did you cause that power outage?"</p><p>"Promise not to get mad?"</p><p>"Oh, honey..." Kit couldn't help laughing a little.</p><p>"You're mad, aren't you?" Sonic murmured worriedly as he shrunk away from her.</p><p>"No, I'm not mad!" Kit chuckled sincerely. "Really, I'm not. I just--I mean... How'd you do that?"</p><p>"Well..." Sonic mumbled under his breath for a moment before looking back up to her. "You know the night of the playoffs right?"</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>"Well, you know how you called out and said I should give baseball a try, right?"</p><p>"Mm-hm."</p><p>"Well, I gave it a shot. And it was fun."</p><p>"Good, good."</p><p>"But, uh... I kinda got lost in my own deluded fantasies a bit."</p><p>"Not as good," Kit muttered with a concerned pinch of her brow.</p><p>"Oh, yeah, my current mental state has been a point of concern for the last six years or so, but uh, topic for another time," Sonic hummed casually with a small shrug. "Anyway, so I kinda started daydreaming about being a baseball star and--"</p><p>"N-No, no, actually, uh--" Kit tugged on Bonnie's reins, forcing her to stop before twisting around to look down to Sonic more directly with a stronger look of concern; Sonic looked up to her with wide eyes filled with surprise at the sudden stop. "What'd you mean by 'deluded fantasies'?"</p><p>"I-I was... kinda half kidding, but, uh..." Sonic, his fingers twisting around Bella's fur, looked away from her in any and all directions under her troubled gaze. "I... Well, you know, when you're living on your own, you gotta make your own company--"</p><p>"You totally went Cast Away, didn't you?" Kit suddenly muttered, her furrowed brow sinking deeper.</p><p>"I did not," Sonic denied firmly, shaking his head.</p><p>"You totally did."</p><p>"I did not!" Sonic insisted in a sharper tone, pouting slightly with a critical look up to her. "Sometimes I just run around fast enough to be in multiple places at once and talk to myself to make it seem like there's more people there than there really are!"</p><p>"Sonic. That's just..." Kit rubbed a hand up her face, her look back down to him a blend of concerned, dry, and sad. "...<em>advanced </em>Cast Away. I know it might have seemed fun and amusing before, but do you hear how it sounds when it actually comes out of your mouth?"</p><p>Sonic, expression unchanging, glared up to her indignantly for a moment as he seemed to process his own words at her behest.</p><p>"...Yeah, okay, it does sound kinda pathetic."</p><p>"Little bit." Smiling gently, Kit watched Sonic's face fall as he looked down to Bella somewhat despondently, and she reached up to take his fuzzy cheek in her hand; he looked up at her when she did. "But I understand. I talked to myself a lot as a kid too."</p><p>"Really?" Sonic's eyes grew when she said this.</p><p>"Yeah. All the time." Her smile brimmed with warmth, and her waist began to ache from her prolonged twist; she had to turn back around and grab the reins, snapping them to make Bonnie continue her stride through the wood; she made a mental note to make that be something to discuss at their first pit stop because <em>holy shit</em> he was way too young to be having delusions. "Not to quite the extreme you did, but... I did do it. I understand why you do it. So you were lost in your fantasies, right?"</p><p>"Right, yeah! And uh, well... I forgot I was alone," Sonic continued, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "So I... kinda got upset and ran around the diamond faster than I usually do, and... I kind of... exploded."</p><p>"Like... literally?" </p><p>"Literally."</p><p>"Oh." Kit hissed, her shoulders hiking up to her ears. "...Ooooooooooooh, shit. So... teeeeeechnically this is all <em>my </em>fault."</p><p>"Huh?"</p><p>"I was the one who suggested you try baseball to begin with."</p><p>After about three seconds, she felt Sonic's head bash into her back. It wasn't a hard bash, probably about the weight of a stuffed animal being lightly tossed at her back, but still. He groaned into her back, and Kit's laughter was mixed with a pathetic moan.</p><p>"I'm sorryyyyyy," she grumbled. "I didn't know you were a kid with issues! I thought you would just have some fuuuuun..."</p><p>Sonic's groaning only got louder.</p><p>This was gonna be a <strong><em>long </em></strong>trip.</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. The Connection</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Temporary Research and Tracking Station<br/>Green Hills, Montana </strong>
  <br/>
  <strong>6:45 PM</strong>
</p><p>There were secrets here.</p><p>Secrets buried amid the seemingly random assortment of garbage, personal affairs and elements from nature neatly organized on the table inside of Robotnik's truck. This wasn't everything he and Stone's agents had collected from both the woman's home and the creature's dwelling, but a significant portion of it.</p><p>From Kit's home, there were the usual personal objects she'd left behind, but also things that wouldn't normally be there... children's items, sports cards, torn magazine pages, child's drawings, random collections of shells, rocks and flowers, and hastily torn letters that he'd reassembled and laminated. She had tried to dispose of the letters in her rush to flee the scene, but had failed to do so efficiently enough. </p><p>From Sonic's cave, they didn't find anything particularly unusual at first. Everything seemed second hand, throw away, pulled out from the garbage; a torn bean bag chair, a boom box, stolen speed limit signs, a large table made from an old exit sign, more old drawings, a giant box of old worn shoes, some old discarded and torn clothes...</p><p>On the surface, it was nothing. But he was noticing a pattern. Or, more appropriately...</p><p>...a theme. A connective tissue that linked these two together. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together, but he <em>was </em>one, so it took him even less time to put it together. </p><p>Robotnik glanced over his shoulder to the scan of the footprint from that morning; the one that led him to the Beaumont home to begin with. In almost no time at all, he had calculated the exact height, weight and spinal curvature of the creature they were now tracking, and it was unlike anything he could have even begun to anticipate until he saw it jump in front of him in the woman's defense. He had an imprint of the small thing in his mind now... It was... something completely not-of-this-world... befitting of someone like <em>him </em>to discover.</p><p>His eyes skimmed over to the containment unit, where the computer was still attempting to scan the energy output. Six and a half hours, and it still wasn't finished. He could only imagine the sheer raw power that was in that tiny quill alone, let alone...</p><p>The sound of footsteps pulled him from his thoughts; the exact pace, stance and weight announced Stone's presence. He didn't bother looking up; he knew he didn't need to as Stone stood behind him, looking over the collection in front of them.</p><p>"Doctor."</p><p>"Tell me what you see here, Stone."</p><p>At Robotnik's very simple command, Stone looked out over the arrangement of items, his brow furrowing as he tried to examine them. After a moment's pause, he shook his head. </p><p>"Personal items, Doctor," he concluded rather plainly, clearly inviting the doctor to explain.</p><p>Robotnik took in a slow, deep breath. Stone wasn't nearly on the same level of intelligence as Robotnik - no one was, really - but at least he didn't give obviously stupid answers. He was one of the few who actually seemed to invite Robotnik's explanations and long-winded streams of knowledge. Oh, what a carefree life it must have been for everyone else around him to have simpler minds than he did.</p><p>"To the uneducated, untrained eye, perhaps," Robotnik started, leaning forward and reaching out to pick up one of the drawings; broken blue, green and yellow Crayola, clay and sand - Scobey soil - stray pencil smudges and eraser marks... "But what you actually see before you, Agent Stone, is a display of character. They thought they could cover their tracks and elude me... and all things considered, they did better than most."</p><p>"They, Dr?"</p><p>"That woman," Robotnik clarified somewhat bluntly, putting the picture down. "Medical documentation not-withstanding, all legal documents were altered to display a gender neutral status four years and eight months ago. I may be a governmental sociopath with a love of machines, a disgust-filled hate for much of humanity and somewhat delusional plans of grandure hoping to rewrite the world in my own image, but even I have the decency to respect pronouns, Agent Stone."</p><p>"I see..." Agent Stone could only be half sure if the doctor was being sarcastic or not... Robotnik wasn't even fully sure if he was being serious or not himself.</p><p>"I've conducted an extensive background check on them and their most relevant connections," Robotnik continued to explain as he stood up from his chair, beginning to circle the table, his eyes scanning its contents again. "And through my research and an examination of their dwelling, I've constructed a clear personal image of the kind of person we're dealing with."</p><p>"And what kind of person would that be, Doctor?" Agent Stone asked, firm and sincere.</p><p>Robotnik pushed off of the table and hurried to the front of the truck, where his massive, main supercomputor was. He sat down at the large chair and pressed a few 'buttons' on the sleek, holographic keyboard in front of him. On the large screen, several different files appeared; medical reports, psychiatric screening reports, school reports, employment reports, vocational rehabilitation reports, confidential therapy reports and several personal emails. Technically, this was a violation of privacy and a few laws he couldn't be bothered to remember, but Kit was a fugitive anyway, so it wasn't like he cared.</p><p>All he was focused on was information, and his goal.</p><p>"We're dealing with a very emotionally and mentally unhinged person. Autism Spectrum, diagnosed ages 8 and 18. Attention Deficit Disorder, diagnosed ages 8 and 18. Executive Functioning Disorder, diagnosed age 25. Clinical depression, diagnosed with suicidal thoughts and attempts at age 16, 18, and 23. Anxiety Disorder, diagnosed age 17. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, diagnosed age 26. Medicated for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder with medication and service animal," Robotnik listed off almost mechanically. "School reports show an inability to connect with other children socially in elementary school and middle school, was homeschooled for much of high school before returning to high school for their 11th and 12th grade just before starting university. Reports from their teachers still showed social withdrawal, inability to engage with other the students or the teachers, and very strong emotional fragility. Frequent emotional outbursts were followed by episodes of emotional withdrawal."</p><p>"They're a recluse?" Stone hazarded a guess, glancing down to Robotnik. </p><p>"Somewhat. They maintain a handful of associative connections in adultlife, but have continued to withdraw socially," Robotnik continued, reaching up to swipe through the screen to a list of transcripts; a few agents asking a few of the townsfolks questions about Kit. "Those... people in the town know them by name, but know little about them. A handful of details they've mentioned in passing, anything I've already found through a background check; birthplace, occupation... Counseling reports suggest familial abuse, and phone records show contact with their family has been infrequent."</p><p>"And how does this relate to the creature, Doctor?"</p><p>If Robotnik believed in a God, he'd have been praying to one for patience because hoo boy, was it hard to be the smart man surrounded by the slow ones...</p><p>"To summarize: All of these reports suggest, Agent Stone, that our friend here was the subject of very severe emotional, mental, verbal and psychological abuse from her peers and authority figures for a majority of their life." Robotnik folded his hands, his lips pursing tight. "In the majority of cases, untreated abuse has one of three outcomes: Lowered empathy, suicide, or heightened empathy. It seems, with the case of the person who flung a chair at my head to defend this... thing... we appear to be looking at the latter outcome."</p><p>Stone's brow rose for a moment, and he twisted around to look at the assortment of objects on the table. Now that he had it pointed out to him, he noticed that lot of the items seemed almost like that of something a child would give to a parent. Robotnik allowed a smirk to slowly crawl across his face; now his companion was finally starting to understand. </p><p>"Based on the collection of items found in Mx. Beaumont's home, where the specific objects were stored, and the traces of Scobey sediment found on all of them, they were clearly given to them as either gifts or peace offerings from the creature," Robotnik continued, almost chuckling as he spun around in his chair and stood, approaching the table and picking up a torn baseball card. "The wear and water damage on the paper of the drawings, the dates printed on the newspapers and magazine clippings, all suggest at least a five-year time spent between them. Combined with the nature of the items recovered from the cave dwelling in the woods, I would wager that the creature has the mindset similar to that of a child; no younger than ten but no older than fourteen, by any human child equivilency."</p><p>Robotnik turned fast to his companion, holding the baseball card between two fingers and pointing the corner of it just inches away from Stone's nose. Stone didn't even flinch, just looking back at his superior attentively. </p><p>"This woman is no terrorist, Stone, no. They've committed a crime far greater than any terrorist ever could." Moving his fingers, he discarded the card, a cruel laugh rolling through his throat. "<em>Being human</em>. This creature began to treat them like its parental figure, and they as their child! They care for it. That's all the stake they have in this; fueled only by emotion. Nothing else."</p><p>Stone nodded, but Robotnik noticed no other reaction. This was the stark difference between Stone and anyone else; anyone else would have reacted with disturbed horror, or questioning the morality behind their actions moving forward, but Stone just nodded.</p><p>"So this explains their connection," Stone summarized rather non-chalantly. "What will be the procedure moving forward, Doctor?"</p><p>Robotnik spun around on his heel to dash back to his computer.</p><p>"An interview with one of their neighbors describes that they placed a phone call just before our confrontation suggestion that they were enroute to Oregon," he started, sitting back down and beginning to type away; a map of the United States popped up on one of the screens as he began to calculate a few locations. "However, this was an obvious misdirect to keep our attention on the exact opposite of their true destination. The only other connections they have with any recent frequency comes from one location in Orlando, Florida: Aubrey Esposito. Cellular history shows a conversation was made just this morning. There are no records of any vehicles being signed under Beaumont's name, nor is any of their information with the Department of Motor Vehicles, thus their own options for transportation would have been foot, bus, or horse. Stables were empty, ergo: Horse."</p><p>"They'll be traveling off-road, then. Clearly studied on how to cover their tracks," Stone added with another nod, frowning softly as he tilted his head to look down at Robotnik and stepped forward to join him by his side. "But why would they go there? Their family is of no military or political importance, and neither is their friend. That wouldn't find protection there, and if <em>time </em>were off the essence in any way, they would have tried a plane instead. What would they hope to achieve by going to Florida?"</p><p>"Quite frankly, Agent Stone, I don't <em>give a damn</em>," Robotnik hummed sternly as his computer finished mapping out a route to Orlando, turning to glare up to Stone. "All I care about right now is that in the time we've spent doing a background search on this woman, my computer still isn't finished reading the energy output of that quill."</p><p>Stone turned to glance at the energy read-out; the scanner wasn't even trying to read out numbers anymore. The scanners were still processing it, but the numbers weren't registering. Robotnik saw his eyes widen slightly, and he nodded condescendingly.</p><p>"Yeah. And that's just the one quill." He pushed himself out of his chair and towered over Stone, waiting for Stone to look up to him mutely before speaking lowly. "Do you have any idea what I could accomplish with the entire thing, Agent Stone?"</p><p>"No, Doctor," Stone denied with a shake of his head, smiling gently. "But I'm sure I'll find out soon."</p><p>"Yes, Stone, you will." Robotnik slowly sat back down, glancing back to the travel route as he waved a hand over the map, summoning his search drones to continue their search of the surrounding area. A sickly grin found a way onto his lips. "<em><strong>Yes, you will.</strong></em>"</p><p>And very soon, Robotnik imagined. If they were really going by horse of all things... hah. He would have them in custody before lunch the next day.</p><p>This would be over with soon enough.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. The First Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Woodland Border<br/>10:45 PM</strong>
</p><p>Kit had opted to let the conversation naturally fade away from depressing conversation to keep Sonic's spirits up while they traveled. It was a long trek to the border of the woods, which stretched for miles down south towards Wyoming. When the sun went down, Sonic took on flashlight duty, guiding them through the dark while Kit led the way through the woods. It was a combined effort. There were plenty of breaks, both for the horse and her riders, but they made sure to keep them brief.</p><p>Finally, with enough of a push from Bonnie through the night, they'd finally cut through enough streets and highways to make it to edge of the stretch of plains that would reach the Montana-Wyoming border. Kit didn't like traveling past sunset; the dark made her nervous. But they were less likely to get caught under the cover of night, so they had to get in as much travel time as they could.</p><p>Bonnie started to slow down when Kit pulled the digital watch out of her pocket, glancing at the time. She slid it back in before pulling on her reins, looking around at the edge of the wood they'd finally come to.</p><p>"Okay, we gotta stop here," she announced, pulling herself off of Bonnie and guiding her over to one of the thick trees to tie the reins to a branch. "Bonnie needs a break and so do we. We'll hunker down here for tonight and get back on the road in the morning."</p><p>Sonic, Bella still tucked away safely in his lap, looked out past the streets to the flatland past the trees. His ears dipped down against his head. They weren't going to have the cover of night or the trees traveling out there during the day. He heard Kit click on her own pocket flashlight, and he turned his head to watch Kit tie the reins to a tree branch. She looked back to him with her flashlight, noticing the brief flash of worry on his face. </p><p>When the two made eyecontact, Sonic smiled down at her. </p><p>"So what's for dinner?"</p><p>When Kit opened her mouth, she prepared to ask him what he was worried about. But instead, she chose to smile and move to the backpack secured onto Bonnie's saddlebag.</p><p>"First, before we worry about dinner, we make camp," Kit started, detaching the bag and letting it fall to the ground. "The tent was too bulky to carry, and if we have to book it, it'd take too much time to take down, so... it's just blankets for us."</p><p>"Small camp," Sonic snorted, to which Kit laughed back up at him.</p><p>"The bulk of the work is gonna be the campfire and an early-warning system." Kit knelt down, unzipping the bag as Sonic jumped down. "Won't do much for the drones, but I can hear those coming. If anyone's coming on foot, traps will give us enough of a heads up to pack up and run."</p><p>"You've given this a lot of thought," Sonic pointed out with a snarky smirk and a raised brow as Kit pulled out a few supplies; some rope, snare traps, Bella's cat food and bowls, water, the food for Kit and Sonic, Bonnie's oats and bowls... </p><p>"My parents were paranoid zombie apocalypse preppers," Kit explained, chuckling sheepishly. "They brought me up on preparing for the worst. Ya know, when the government stopped existing and we all had to fend for ourselves. Or we had to, like. Run from the government or something. They always made it sound fun; like a family bonding experience or an adventure or something."</p><p>"Kinda like what we're doing now?"</p><p>Kit snorted, plopping down on her butt as she started filling both bowls with either cat food or oats. Sonic squatted down and watched Bella rush over to her bowl, immediately devouring her food before Kit was even done mixing it all and putting the bowl down.</p><p>"Yeah, pretty much. Also helps that I've written about a couple characters that had to do pretty much the same thing too," Kit chuckled, reaching into backpack again to find the firestarter kit she'd packed. "So I could google stuff with plausible deniability. Honestly, I'm kinda surprised that <em>this </em>is what got me in trouble with the government."</p><p>"What's that?" Sonic asked suddenly, pointing the flashlight down at the firestarter kit before turning it up to Kit so he could look up to her with big, curious eyes. </p><p>"This?" Kit put the kit down before digging around for her small shovel, smiling softly. "It's a firestarter kit. You ever build a campfire?"</p><p>"No!" Sonic stood up suddenly, hopping in place as his eyes lit up. "We're gonna build a campfire?!"</p><p>"Yep. We gotta cook dinner somehow," Kit laughed, charmed by his enthusiasm and glad to get his attention onto something else. "We gonna roast us some weinies."</p><p>"Woohoo!!"</p><p>"You know how to set those traps, right?"</p><p>"Yeah! I've seen Crazy Carl set 'em up before," Sonic assured her with a confident nod. </p><p>"Okay, so, how 'bout you get those traps set up real quick while I get camp more or less squared away and the fire pit dug up," Kit suggested, nudging the traps over to him as she pointed the flashlight to them in reference. "And when you get back, I'll teach you how to start a fire. Deal?"</p><p>There were practically stars in the boy's eyes when Kit lifted the flashlight back up to him, the light showing him gathering up all the traps in the span of half a second before he sat up straight again.</p><p>"Deal!"</p><p>Kit let out a stronger laugh as Sonic tore off into the woods, leaves and sticks scattering into the darkness in his wake. The best she could do was make the best of a bad situation and keep Sonic's spirits up, and if making this into an adventure and a fun camping trip was the best way to do it, that worked just fine for her.</p><p>She spread out the blankets and pillows for her and Sonic, and keeping the flashlight tucked between her teeth, she started digging the firepit for both of them. She could faintly hear the dashes and gushes of wind that ran with Sonic as he set up the security traps around their campsite, and Bella approached her to paw at and sniff her little shovel. Kit paused to give her a tiny pet on her head, and Bella rolled over onto her back.</p><p>"Yes, Bella, you're very helpful."</p><p>All Kit got back in return was a low meow and a purr. Just as she stood up from digging a sufficient enough hole and brushed the dirt off of her pants, she could heard Sonic skid to a stop beside her, the light of his flashlight washing over her. She looked down to him with her own flashlight and found him beaming up to her proudly.</p><p>"Done! What's next?"</p><p>"Okay, first, we need three thick pieces of dry firewood and a lot of smooth rocks," Kit started, her flashlight showcasing the hole she'd dug, free of sticks, roots and leaves. </p><p>"On it!" Sonic raced back out into the woods again, and Kit took the five seconds he was gone to kneel down to his level until he came back to his initial spot; in his arms, he held three logs of firewood and a large collection of smooth rocks. "Got 'em!"</p><p>"Good job!" Kit ruffled his quills with her free hand and tapped the ground with her flashlight. "Put 'em down here. I'll show you how to set it up. This is how you make a smokeless firepit."</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>11:25 PM</strong>
</p><p>"Yours has cheese in it?!"</p><p>"Yeah, man, what'd you think I meant by a cheesedog?"</p><p>"Aww, no fair, I want one with cheese in it."</p><p>"Don't worry, bud, there's plenty in here."</p><p>Sonic accepted the package of cheesedogs that Kit passed to him and was quick to jab his metal marshmallow stick into the two that he pulled out. He hovered it over the softly crackling firepit they'd built together, and impatiently waited for it to roast the hot dogs. His legs twitched and he frowned at the slow moving heat before glancing at Kit in his peripheral. She was sitting on her blanket next to him, legs crossed with her laptop open on her lap and Bella curled up against her thigh.</p><p>Incognito mode on satellite internet wasn't perfect, whatever that was, but she said it was the best way of communicating with Aubrey that she was gonna get. She'd taken one or two bites of her cheese dogs, but even after the entire trip, she didn't seem all that hungry. She seemed way too distracted... or engrossed in her conversation.</p><p>"So," Sonic started, briefly earning a glance from Kit as he scooted closer on his own blanket. "Firehair Lady said she was gonna make it so they couldn't track your cell phone?"</p><p>"Yep. It's a little harder than making your laptop untracable and still having access to the internet, but for her, it's doable," Kit explained with a nod.</p><p>"How can they track your cell phone anyway?" Sonic asked with a small frown.</p><p>"The government and law enforcement has a really tight security network to catch criminals." Kit moved her laptop aside just enough for Sonic to be able to see her cellphone after she picked it up. "See, cell phones work off of wireless signals through radio and cell phone towers. That's how you can get reception to begin with; otherwise you'd be plugged into the wall all the time. So if they wanted to track my cell phone, they'd just have to narrow down on those signals through the radio tower, and boom; they have my location."</p><p>"Oooh..."</p><p>"So what Aubrey's doing," Kit continued, setting down her cell phone and pulling her laptop closer to her. "Is setting up a StingRay jammer. Hopefully it'll mean I can use my cell phone without being traced."</p><p>"She can do that?" Sonic sat up, his ears perking in astounished wonder as Kit grinned back up to him.</p><p>"Aubrey's a worker of many miracles," she chuckled. "She works as a technical engineer. She's really good with computers and programming and stuff like that. She's talking to me right now through an anonymous email site Robotnik can't trace, and I'm not using her name."</p><p>"You two are weirdly prepared for this," Sonic half-laughed, leaning closer to the fire to continue cooking his food as Kit snorted.</p><p>"Neither of us ever trusted our government, for..." Kit coughed uncomfortably, looking up for a second. "...a variety of reasons. So we came up with ideas to evade the government a long time ago. Ya know, for shits and giggles. I just never thought I'd actually have to use any of those ideas... though, not gonna lie, a part of me was hoping I'd be able to."</p><p>Sonic pulled away from the heat of the fire and quirked a brow at her quizzically. </p><p>"You were <em>hoping </em>to end up on the lam from the government?" </p><p>Kit let out another laugh, but this one was a little weaker; tired. She picked up her stick to take a few more bites of her hot dogs before she continued speaking.</p><p>"In a weird way... I guess so." She shrugged. "I mean, I hate sleeping without my dogs and being outside at night makes me really nervous. But something exciting to break up the monotony is nice. It's good to have an adventure sometimes."</p><p>Sonic tried not to frown, but when Kit's eyes went back to her laptop, he turned away to hide his troubled expression for a second. He could tell she was trying hard to make the best of a bad situation for his sake. He turned his eyes up to his hot dogs; their sides were splitting, processed cheese oozing out from inside. He brought the stick away from the fire and over to his mouth, tearing into the meat. It was about a minute and a half for him, but it was probably only half a second for Kit.</p><p>He wiped his mouth with his arm and looked back up to Kit when he was done. She picked up her phone and was turning it back on when she looked up and made eye contact with him. Sonic forced a smile up at her as he put his stick down.</p><p>"Well, lucky for you, your new best friend is a magnet for danger," he agreed, his eyes lighting up when Kit laughed.</p><p>"Best friend, huh?" Kit asked, her goodnatured, teasing smile reading her eyes.</p><p>"I mean, after you feed a guy for five years, and you throw your body in front of a robot turret for the lady feeding you for five years..." Sonic pointed out with a sly little smirk, earning a passive shrug from Kit.</p><p>"Good point." She reached over her laptop to sink her fingers into his quills, ruffling the fur underneath and scratching gently between his twitching ears. "Okay, best friend status earned."</p><p>"Really?!" </p><p>"Really-really."</p><p>Sonic shot up to his feet, beaming down at her as Kit withdrew and smiled up at him.</p><p>"You quoted Shrek at me?!"</p><p>"Yes, I did."</p><p>Sonic hid his muzzle behind his balled up fists, his ears falling flat against his head as his eyes grew wider with emotion.</p><p>"I've been blessed."</p><p>"Blessed with memes," Kit chuckled, turning back down to her laptop. "Now as happy I am that you're excited, please sit back down and lower your voice before someone hears you."</p><p>"O-Oh, right, right, sorry." Sonic plopped back down onto his blanket, pulling his legs up to cross his eyes similarly to how Kit did. "Being quiet now."</p><p>"Good boy."</p><p>Kit might have just been joking or teasing when she said that... but something about the words made Sonic's tail flick behind him and a strange feeling flutter inside his chest. His brow furrowed as his eyes skimmed back over to the fire, and he brought up his hand to feel the radiant warmth of the flames.</p><p>He could barely remember the last time he'd actually been this close up to a real fire... If he tried really hard, he could recall Longclaw showing him how to light a torch once. He couldn't remember how, but he knew she did it. He could remember her claws sparking the flames along the oiled wood. How old was he...? Two... maybe he'd just turned three. It couldn't have been more than a few months before...</p><p>Before--</p><p>His breath spiked, and he realized he was too close to the heat; his eyes were burning. He closed his eyes to block out the heat and rubbing his eyes... </p><p>Oh. </p><p>It wasn't the fire.</p><p>"Hey. You okay?"</p><p>Sonic rubbed his eyes with the side of his hand and blinked away the hot tears before glancing back to Kit. She closed her laptop and set it aside, her brow crunching with concern. Bella pushed off against her thigh and stood up, strolling over to Sonic and immediately flopping down into his lap. Sonic flinched at the sudden weight, but he just wrapped his arms around her and sunk his fur into hers. He grinned over to Kit and nodded.</p><p>"Yeah. Just got too close," Sonic assured her, nodding. "Did you get your cell phone blocked?"</p><p>"Mm-hm. For the most part." Kit slid the laptop back into its case and pulled her backpack closer to store it where it was safe. "I gotta be careful with my internet search history and I gotta logout of all my stuff and make new accounts, but for the most part, I should be fine to use the internet and make calls. Not that I'll be calling anyone besides Aubrey anyway."</p><p>Once the laptop was put up, Kit scooted herself and her blanket closer to Sonic and Bella. As she did, Sonic started to notice that Bella was vibrating, and he looked down in sudden surprise.</p><p>"Woah. She's vibing."</p><p>Kit laughed as she settled down next to him, taking off her glasses. She set them down on her backpack and reached over to scratch behind Bella's ears.</p><p>"She's purring," she explained. "It's a way for cats to relax, show affection or comfort themselves. Or other. They typically do it with other cats, but they do it with people too."</p><p>"Maybe I'm part cat," Sonic guessed with a sassy glance up to Kit, then back down to Bella as he snuck a hand down against her stomach.</p><p>"Maybe." Kit pulled back, bringing her hand up in between Sonic's ears this time. "Alternatively, is there... anything you wanna talk about before we go to sleep?"</p><p>Sonic's mouth opened, then closed, as he turned back over to the fire. The feeling up on his head was... what was the word he was looking for? ...Familiar? He definitely didn't hate it. Had he ever felt a hand on his head before...? Or the purring against his stomach?</p><p>...</p><p>It was too late at night to be bothering Lunch Lady about this stuff. Maybe tomorrow.</p><p>"Nah." He shrugged, looking up to her motherly expression with a new smile. "I'm fine. Just thinkin'."</p><p>"What about?"</p><p>"Stuff." Sonic's fingers twisted around Bella's long fur absentmindedly as he turned back to the fire. "Just... stuff."</p><p>"Mm... If you're sure," Kit scratched behind his ears for a second, and Sonic couldn't help leaning up into it, his leg twitching pleasantly. "We should be getting some sleep, then. If you wanna talk about your stuff in the morning, feel free to let me know, okay?"</p><p>"Do we have to?" Sonic moaned slightly, leaning against her dramatically. "It's only 11:45."</p><p>"It's almost midnight, and the sun comes up at 6:45 tomorrow," Kit pointed out with an amused smirk, lightly nudging him away so she could fall back to lay down on her blanket; Sonic watched her for a second before plopping down on his back with her. "And I'm not carrying your tired, cranky butt around all day tomorrow. So you need to go to bed, okay?"</p><p>"Okaaaaaay..." Sonic sighed, letting Bella crawl up onto his chest and curl up in a ball on top of him; she was so light that he hardly minded. </p><p>"We'll make breakfast and get moving in the morning," Kit mused quietly, pulling her hood over her eyes as she pulled her second blanket over her body. "We won't have any cover trying to go over the border so we're gonna have to move fast tomorrow."</p><p>"Fast is my middle name," Sonic pointed out, laughing at Kit's snort-chuckle as he pulled over his second blanket for warmth.</p><p>"I know it is. I'm just saying." Kit let out a soft sigh and turned over onto her side to face the tree-lining. "Seriously. Get some sleep."</p><p>"I will, I will, don't worry..."</p><p>Kit nodded, letting out a half-believing little noise before turning over completely and getting comfortable. Sonic adjusted himself and his blanket around him and Radar, his eyes turning back up to the sky. Recounting all the stories Longclaw had told him about the stars... or... at least trying to. There was so much he should have written down, so much he was sure he wasn't going to forget that was now foggy and half-recalled in pieces and fragments.</p><p>...</p><p>He wiped the side of his face again.</p><p>That night marked the first time in Sonic's life that he ever lied.</p>
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